


Hallowed Apollyon

by Rococospade



Series: Champions of the Pit [2]
Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time
Genre: All Hylians hear voices, Eldritch Gods - Freeform, Fairies aren't always nice, General Xenophobia, Idiots in Love, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Link hugs everyone he meets, M/M, Multi, My personal ode to ghost stories, Other, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Past Abuse, Racism, Slow Burn, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Vampires, Whorephobia, Work In Progress, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-15
Updated: 2020-05-13
Packaged: 2020-10-19 10:04:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 67,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20655419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rococospade/pseuds/Rococospade
Summary: After the defeat of Ganondorf, Link returns to the forest. His retirement lasts all of eleven months before he's forced out into Hyrule. On his way to a water-logged city in Hyrule's southern country, he hears rumor of a wandering minstrel.At the same time, under very different circumstances but with similar goals, the rumored minstrel finds himself unraveling a very strange plot in a city full of ghosts and the unkindly living."At the bottom of a pit an old crow is sleeping. If it wakes up it will come with wings wreathed in flames, and take the whole world with it."Updates on the 13th of each month.





	1. Cloak and Lyre

**Author's Note:**

> This is an adult-timeline post OoT AU with an emphasis on expanding the world and a horror flavor, primarily me playing with the concept that Sheikah are a cursed tribe and that the Gerudo aren't a unified collective. Dark is not evil, but it can certainly scare the unaware.  
Sheik is not Zelda, but Link doesn't know that. As an aside: if you feel the need to inform me how wrong I am about that particular detail, please be aware that you are far from the first and if I was interested in sticking to canon I would just novelize the game. Thank you.
> 
> Please don't pick up injured people if you aren't trained to do so safely. In fact, in general it would probably be better not to imitate the things people in this story do... I really cannot recommend it.
> 
> Lastly, this chapter is unbeta'd and all mistakes are my own. My apologies! Nonetheless, I hope you enjoy this.

After the battle, Link went back to the forest. 

Well. That was not entirely accurate. After the party after the battle, he went back to the forest. And he stayed there. The woods were warm and close and home. Outside was too different, too bright, too empty for him to consider returning. 

After he’d saved Hyrule, and Navi had left his side, Link returned to his home in the Kokiri woods and slept. 

<3< 

If someone asked Link what he remembered later, years later, about the day they had emerged victorious against Ganondorf… well. 

Realistically, he would stalk away from them without answering at all. But suppose he did answer. Instead of storming off. If you supposed that, his answer would be that: it was snatches of events. There had been a heady cocktail of emotions, some but not many pleasant. There had been a party, that he… mostly recalled. There had been a battle, and his muscles had recalled it the entire day, aching and scarred. 

He remembered, _ pain-failure-relief-victory _ . He remembered, without being able to untangle them, the day before Hyrule was freed of Ganon (for now just for now always _ for now _ and never _ for good _ ) _ . _He’d collected the medallions to reach the citadel Ganondorf had made of magic and stone from the remnants of Hyrule Castle. 

In the Temple of Time Link met his guide. A winding journey that had scant days before seemed to spool out into the future, endless- had snapped into place with jarring finality. Another day, another hour. 

Link was without nerves - it wasn’t that he was assured that he would win, because he wasn’t. If he’d ever been so it was short lived, had died when he’d looked up up _ up _ into the rolling staring eye of Queen Gohma. It was rather that, after months running about the country _ trying _not to die and sometimes only being spared by stupid luck or the kindness of fairies - Link had been forced to make peace with his mortality. If he did fail then suddenly it was someone else’s problem, wasn’t it. 

The weather was damp, thunderheads crowding the air above Castletown. It never rained there in the cursed future, yet sun only parted the thrice-damned clouds when Link called on it by magic and, temporarily, stunned the undead in the square with its light. The Temple of Time loomed overhead, grey as the clouds, black at its base with the accumulated filth of seven years of battle and neglect. The stone was cold where he touched it, passing into the sanctum - not cool as a building should be, but rather as if he’d stumbled into a winter-scarred city for all that the rest of it felt like the earth had cracked open and the scorch-fire of the underworld was oozing out. 

The scar on his stomach was acting up, which made walking rather more trying than it ought to have been. The doors swung shut and he was cut off from the smothering heat of _ outside _and thrust instead into Fimbulwinter. Frost decorated the window eaves - the stained glass that towered above them was coated in flourishes of hoarfrost. 

“Something isn’t right here,” Navi said, fluttering close around his head. “Link… be careful.” 

Link eyed the floor, dusted unblemished white, and said nothing. He had never before seen the inside of a building coated with snow. 

His breath came out in soft clouds, and if his scar had hurt before now it positively ached. The cold felt like claws settling into his skin - icy, without kindness, and it ripped from him even the sense of company. _ You are alone, _ the snow whispered to him, in a voice that was tempting and terrible in changing turns. _ There is no one here beside you. Lay down a while and listen to my heartbeat, and know you are alone _ _ . _

He staggered against a pillar and sunk to the floor to breathe. 

_ Alone. Alone. Alone. You will always be- _

Link saw something blue and black at the back of the temple, and raised his head to track it. He raised a hand and pushed a lock of hair from his face to see better, and frost brushed off against his fingers. It dripped on his neck, wet, ran down under his clothes- Link shuddered and pressed himself closer to the heart-of-ice stone pillar. Whatever was pacing beyond the light moved into the space below a window. The sky outside was overcast, but the clouds must have broken because light was streaming through the windows in weak fuzzy shafts like moonbeams. There was a flash of blond hair, disarrayed, colored near to silver by the eldritch light. _ Sheik _ _ , _ Link thought, and his pulse jumped. He struggled to his feet, heedless of the soft soothing buzz of Navi’s wings, the sibilant murmur of the snowfall. (He’d never seen snow before. He did not know this was not how things should have been, beyond that he knew it did not usually snow _ inside of _ buildings.) 

“You’re here,” Link murmured, and stumbled again. 

Sheik ran from the darkness and caught him under the shoulders, hauling him back to his feet before he could properly fall. 

“Link! What’s wrong?!” Navi’s buzzing got louder. It drowned out the snow, which Link thought he preferred over the mantra of _ alone _ _ alone ALONE _the stuff seemed so insistent on. With Sheik holding him up the room seemed a few degrees warmer. He preferred that, too. 

“Hero,” Sheik murmured, with more restraint in his voice that Link had ever felt in his entire _ life, _“I see you persist in making a nuisance of yourself. Have you not a potion?” 

“Used them up. Temple.” Link shut his eyes, “Twinrova is dead.” 

“I would have guessed.” Sheik lifted him as if he were nothing - Link wanted to protest being slung over someone’s shoulder like a bag of root vegetables, but more than that he wanted to sleep while he had the warmth Sheik seemed to carry around with him. It was time, or so close to time, and he was so tired. “Since they did not pursue you, and since the doorway is open.” 

Link did not know what he meant. “The bridge?” 

Sheik clicked his tongue. “The bridge was never the important part, Hero. There are always ways around gaps. What we needed was the gateway forced open.” 

Link, who had always found gaps to be nearly insurmountable and doors comparatively trivial in the realm of trials, eyed him askance. Or Sheik’s back, anyway. That day he was unarmed, and something about the lack of a short-sword seemed to linger in Link’s mind. “Did you break it?” 

Sheik kicked open another door. Link couldn’t see it, but he heard it fine. The room they walked into was strange - darkness hovered on the stoop and kept even reflected light at bay, and the interior was the unbroken blackness of an overcast night. Here more than anywhere else in the temple, the air felt like the Forest, like fairy-magic and quiet things and being home. 

“I’ve broken a lot of things,” Sheik said, “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.” 

<3< 

Days before this they had met in the desert: Link had been wandering the sand wastes, not… lost, exactly. 

(No, definitely, he had been without a doubt lost-) 

Sheik had been armed, then, with daggers and his shortsword. He had emerged from the shimmering waves of sand and moonlight; more of a spectre than a flesh-and-blood man. He’d tossed his head as if Link had been running very late for a scheduled meeting, caught him under the arm when he’d staggered, and started to haul him through the wastes as if he weighed nothing at all. Link sagged into his side and let himself shut his eyes. 

When Link came to they were settled beside a smouldering pile of what was once fire, and Sheik’s eyes were shut. Sheik had wound an arm around Link to keep him from disappearing into the desert - as if he were planning to hare off at the first opportunity, like his guide! - and his cloak had been used to cover them both. The sky was dark, the air cold, and the sand itself seemed intent on sucking all the heat and life out of Link. But the space between them was warm, and if he focused on it enough he found he could lull himself back to dozing. 

“You are… a very difficult person.” Sheik murmured at some point, against his hair - Link muttered back something unkind, which wasn’t particularly sensible but was apparently enough to make Sheik snort. 

“No, you _ are _, hero.” Sheik heaved a heavy sigh, and carded his fingers through Link’s tangled bangs as well as he could. “Rest now. Fight later.” 

All of the world was fighting, really, and Link thought it rather senseless to be told to stop. Stopping was how you died, wasn’t it? 

Sheik wasn’t interested in his protests. Of course he wasn’t. He shushed Link until they were both asleep again. 

<3< 

When they woke up it was to Gerudo, which wouldn’t have been so bad if they had been - well - any of the dozen other half-friendly tribes of Gerudo scattered across the desert like so many fallen stars. 

As it happened, the group that had found them were loyal to Ganondorf or at least uninterested in opposing Twinrova, who was accompanying them. And the elder-witches were… less than thrilled, to discover Sheik resting with the hero as if they were fast friends. 

That had been, actually, how Link had found out Sheik was playing both sides of their war. Because Twinrova had asked him what the hell he’d thought he was doing, and Sheik had responded by _ spitting in their faces. _

(Verbally, of course. He could hardly spit through the cowl, but the look of naked loathing he gave them made plain his wishes anyway.) _ So, _ Link had thought then, _ It’s a fight and we’re outnumbered. _He wasn’t even sure Sheik could properly fight, but - he looked up at the wrong time and saw a Gerudo hit the sand hard, bleeding from a half dozen little scratches slashed half-hazard along her torso. Saw Sheik half-crouched, snarling, the firelight in his eyes painting him as no less than a furious animal cornered in its den. 

_ Nevermind then. _

Link couldn’t stomach killing human enemies, not with any intention. He aimed to injure - hoped anyone he forced down found their way back to food and water even with those injures. He didn’t let himself think he was condemning them to a slow death instead of honoring them with a swift one. He tried not to think of anything but surviving, and Sheik surviving, and Navi staying with them in the clash and clatter of the battle. 

The Gerudo began to flag, bruises and lacerations decorating their ribs. _ Why aren’t you in armor, _ Link wondered, not for the first time. _ What benefit does it grant? _

_ Is it worth it? _

Blood stained the sand. Sheik went flying - he turned his head to watch - and hit the wall with a crack. 

The Gerudo who’d thrown him, not unlike Bongo Bongo had, lowered her sword and dropped to one knee in the sand. She looked spent, and the places where Sheik’s blood had splashed on her seemed to be - smoking? Bubbling, hissing. She looked down and her eyes widened in something like panic. 

“Elder!” She called, voice deep. The witches turned to her, and her voice raised in a snarl of pain… 

Link stumbled through the shifting dunes toward Sheik, laying unmoving at the base of a bit of stonework where it emerged from the wastes. Link pulled Sheik up and over his shoulders. He headed away from the Spirit Temple, deeper into the network of ruins around it, and held tight to his burden. Sheik was very still against him, quiet, and he didn’t stir for the better part of an hour. 

Link made another camp in the ruins of something far greater than anything he’d seen whole and laid out what he could, his cloak and his bag, and made a palette for Sheik to sleep on. Then he laid the Sheikah on it and… waited. He checked him for injuries. He checked his breath - it came and went, peaceful like in sleep - and his eyes - red, pupil blown wide enough to see the stars reflected on the black. 

Link curled up against himself and spoke with Navi in a voice low enough that even the wind shouldn’t hear them. 

When Sheik woke, he was wrong. Disoriented. He looked around with naked fear on his face, an emotion Link had never seen on him before and might never see again. His voice was strange, and even when he recognized Link he acted as if he were somewhere wrong and Link was someone intimidating. 

Link tried to catch him. “We’re safe - you’ve hit your head-” 

“I can’t be here!” Sheik said wide-eyed, “He should be here! If he isn’t here, then where- what has happened to us?” He got up and staggered away from Link. A few steps in, it became a run. 

Link went after him. Sheik ran on the sand like it was solid earth, and the shifting hills of it moved to cover his retreat from sight. His footsteps were swallowed by the wind soon after. Link padded after him, afraid. And then tired, and then resigned. 

It was hard to keep track of a Sheikah in a desert full of illusions. Maybe he could have done it at his best, but there was rarely ever a time on a journey for one to be at their best in body and spirit. Late that night, Link found himself back at his camp, and accepted a temporary defeat in the face of magic and nature. He thanked the desert for its kindness, and settled to sleep. In the morning it would be better. He put out of mind that he’d lost a friend while that friend was vulnerable and confused, because he had to. He did not see Sheik again until they met on the steps of the Spirit Temple. 

<3< 

Curled somewhere in the dark, Link let himself sleep and remember. 

Nabooru, the Gerudo he’d met in the past, had been inside of the Spirit Temple in the future - locked in a suit of enchanted armor, and held hostage to the will of twin witches by a gem on her forehead. 

Perhaps thief was a meaningless word in the desert, for Nabooru hadn’t fought as he’d expect a coward and rogue should. She’d had the strength of a giant and the speed of a demon, and she’d been intent on smashing him into so much putty. 

When she’d failed to kill him the witches had snatched her away. _ You’re responsible for that. _

_ You are _ _ n’t strong enough to save anyone and now she’s _ ** _ gone _ ** _ . _

It wasn’t any voice in his mind, but the whispers of the temple. All of the temples had them - they were cruel, and usually below notice. He shut his eyes against them as if a lack of sight should drown out sound. 

_ Well, she’s gone now. _ Another voice whispered, too close to his ear, too flat. Almost like Impa had left the Shadow Temple to call on him here. _ Are you going to go get her - or not? _

<3< 

Link awoke choking. He was in the Temple of Time, Navi was on his shoulder, Sheik was nearby, _ we are alive _. He need only remember! He need only believe it. 

The darkness was gone, and the room he’d been resting in was only a storage chamber in the larger temple. All of his hurts seemed to be healed - marveling at this quietly, Link let himself out of the room refreshed. It must have been early morning; the sunrise streaming in from the east windows caught on Sheik’s hair and left it radiant with light. He turned to face Link; the other side of his face was shadowed except for the light reflected in his eye- like a cat looking back from the darkness. Sheik’s eye crinkled at the corner with what might have been a smile; he said nothing to Link. 

Link’s stomach gurgled, quiet once and then louder. He felt faint a moment. 

He took slow, delicate steps toward Sheik, who made no motion to meet him. When Link was close enough to speak he let himself collapse. The aches of his body were gone: without them he was left hungry. 

Sheik nearly jumped a foot in the air, turned his face full in the light to stare at Link. “Are you still injured? Hero!” He crouched to examine Link. 

When it became obvious to him that Link was merely hungry, and not dying of unseen hurts, Sheik relaxed. His eye crinkled again at the corner; he looked as friendly as he ever could while wrapped up in robber’s clothes. “Ah… You look pale. When and what did you last eat?” 

Link tried to remember, then deigned not to respond in the interest of not incriminating himself. He focused instead on the dark cloth wound around Sheik’s shoulders, a cloak Link had never seen before and whose image was burnt into his memory. It looked heavy, maybe to ward off the morning chill, and was dyed with the handsome blue of night-time. 

Sheik let out a little laugh. “I suppose that’s just like you. No time to eat, there are enemies to fight. Have I got the handle of it?” He reached into a pouch on his side and withdrew a wax-paper parcel. He pressed it into Link’s hand, murmuring, “_Blood _ _ knight.” _With almost aching fondness. 

(It was an insult, but like most things - Link hadn’t understood the significance at the time.) 

Inside were samosas made without seasoning. Link wolfed them down as quick as possible. 

Sheik moved closer to him while he ate – Link paid little mind to it, because eating had taken precedence over anything his body didn’t manage on autopilot. Link felt but didn’t catalogue the touches down his sides, back, front. They were no more than clinical prodding, as if Sheik were convinced whatever magic the room had kept had somehow overlooked an injury. 

Link had looked up after his meal, thought apparently not in an obsequious enough manner. Sheik caught his eye and _ clucked _as if he were a very troublesome child. 

“Don’t look at me like that.” The Sheikah said, tapping his finger against Link’s chin- Link nearly went cross-eyed trying to watch his hand. “Maybe if you learned to dodge I wouldn’t be patching you.” He’d murmured, and pushed up Link’s tunic without a thought to asking permission. Link’s face colored and his breath caught. Sheik ignored him, and examined the exposed skin by sight. His friends were mother-cuccos, and he was inhaling his last mouthful of food. Horrible. 

“Oh – don’t choke on your meal, either.” Sheik added, too little too late, focused on his work. 

Link swatted him on the shoulder and rubbed his own throat to ease the last bite down. He whispered, “I don’t know why I missed you. You’re terrible.” 

Sheik looked up, his eye crinkling with delight. “I wouldn’t be a very good friend if I let your mistakes go unannounced, hero.” His hand had brushed Link’s cheek – at the time it had left Link sputtering. Recalling it later left him cold inside. 

Sheik hadn’t seemed to notice how red Link had gone. He was looking Link over close enough that he should have seen it, but was distracted seeking something else out. He pressed a hand to Link’s shoulder. “Your skin is cold. What happened to your cloak?” 

“Twinrova.” Link muttered, bunching in on himself for warmth and to make himself a smaller target (as well as that worked against verbal jabs, which wasn’t very). Apparently cloth didn’t like fire. Who knew, right? 

Sheik shook his head. “Well. I’ll see if I can’t find you something before we depart tomorrow.” 

He patted Link once. The mention of ‘tomorrow’ seemed to strike Sheik with melancholy, and his expression lost its fondness. He was quiet a moment, introspective, before he tilted his head back to regard Link. “I, I’m sorry to say there are things I have kept from you, hero.” 

_ Never _a good thing to hear, then or now. Link’s stomach dropped, and he wondered a little at the grim look on his friend’s face. But Sheik was a very private person; Link let the matter go. 

The kingdom was burning and they were on the precipice of either salvation or ruin. Even Sheik couldn’t stay flowers and too-sharp-smiles in the face of that. 

“But we’ll talk about it after you’ve rested again, properly.” Sheik touched Link on the cheek, hand gentle. “Come on,” His voice went chiding, “You look like you’re about to join the last ship to the underworld. You can use my cot.” 

That reminded too much of the Shadow Temple, which Link had resolved not to think about. He refused to respond to it. 

Link forced himself to his feet. His voice must have been depressingly ragged, for Sheik winced in sympathy to hear it. “You’ve been sleeping here?” Not in the dark room. Something about it seemed as if no one could rest there, if they weren’t on the verge of death from pain itself. 

Sheik nodded and reached out a hand. A moment later he’d caught Link by his sleeve, and drew him into a shaded alcove of the temple. 

“Of course. Ganondorf cannot reach here-” Sheik turned and gave Link a sly smile from under his hair, eye glittering brilliant red. “It’s the last safe house in Castletown.” 

_ ( _ ** _ Such _ ** _ a liar. _) 

The room that led to the dark Link had emerged from was yet a plain closet when they passed it, and he almost wondered if he imagined the magic inside. In the northeast corner of the temple was a cot pushed flush to the walls, safe from the sunlight streaming in. Sheik turned away from him to grant privacy. 

Link laid down with a sigh of relief, pressing his cheek to the bed roll and smelling heather. He’d just rested, yet now he felt as if he needed to sleep years instead of hours - like he was too old for his bones- like he was too old for the world he tread in at all. He shivered from the draft in the old building– remembered the snow and frost when he’d come in and wondered if he’d dreamed it. The Temple sanctum was always terribly cold, even when the world outside burned. Perhaps it was suspended outside reality because it was the gateway to the Sacred Realm - or whatever was left now that Ganondorf had tainted it by his touch. 

_It wouldn’t have been possible without us,_ Link realized, eyes shut. _We opened the door._

Another voice pressed against his mind, female, young and old and not quite Sheik’s but not quite a stranger’s. _ The Gateway is always the part that matters, isn’t it. You hold the key. _

Link opened his eyes; they were alone. The whisper of bat wings carried down from the rafters. In front of him Sheik unpinned and shrugged off his cloak. He snapped his wrists, throwing it wide over Link as a blanket. Sheik gave him a pleased look when Link emerged from the cover. “Have a rest.” 

Sheik leaned against the wall with his arms crossed, and his eye refocused on the door of the temple. 

Link peered up at him. His voice came out raspy, “What about you?” 

Sheik looked back and gave him the sort of withering look Link hadn’t seen since they were camping in the desert wastes. “I am fine; I _ slept _ last night. _ You _ just stumbled in half-dead.” He drawled. Link could see him fingering the sheath of a weapon almost absently. “I’ll still be here when you wake up. And – yes,” Sheik gave him a sharp look, “If I get especially chill, somehow, I will not keel over from it. Sleep.” Satisfied, he looked back at the doors; guarding against something he insisted they were safe from. “When you’ve rested, properly… then we’ll talk.” 


	2. Sirensong

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The events before our story proper, but after the fall of Ganondorf. Or, Link gets to go to his own damn party.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Currently unbetaed. P2 of Cloak and Lyre. They were originally one chapter but it was getting so big and unwieldy that I cut them into two...  
I think I'm going to update this monthly. I have enough for about a year of regular updates written out if I do that. Most of the chapters are at or above 5k words because I've never learned to shut up a day in my LIFE.  
Mostly still just getting people up to where the story starts for the AU at this point. I wonder if I couldn't have just done a summary, but it became several pages of kicking characters while they're down instead. I suppose that's how these things go.

“When you’ve rested, properly… then we’ll talk.” 

Link thought he would remember those words clear as bells for the rest of his life. The sting of being lied to persisted, a wound he couldn’t stop picking. 

He’d gone to sleep under the blue cloak. He’d woke under a beige one. 

Sheik was there (sans cloak). His voice had a breathy quality that set Link’s nerves on edge, and when he spoke it seemed _ off _ in a way difficult to place. It was like Sheik had been in the desert, but instead of scared and confused he sounded _ sorry _. 

“There is something I have been keeping from you… Link.” The words were wrong; the emphasis was different than before, the consonants rounded instead of sharp or blunt or hissing. Link did not get time to dwell on it. 

There was brilliant light, and a rush of magic that felt as if it wished to push him from his very skin. Then the princess of Hyrule, a person he’d met twice, was standing where his friend had been. And Link realized there had never been any place for him in Hyrule at all_ . _

Laughter filled the temple. Princess Zelda’s face went bloodless awful white. 

Ganondorf’s voice echoed in the halls around them, “So this is where you’ve been hiding!” And another bright light heralded Zelda’s capture after seven years of evasion. 

Link ran through the market of redeads, probably almost died on the way. Stumbled to a halt before the rainbow bridge. Forced himself not to overthink things: there was no time. Rushed in headlong with the Mastersword singing in his hand. 

Another dungeon. At that a poor copy of the ones he’d faced before, pieced together slapdash. 

(_ No thought or elegance to be had by gods or monsters or beasts.) _

More voices than he’d heard anywhere outside a temple drifted up from the darkness; the castle was no longer _ quite _where it should be in the alignment of worlds. 

_ Evil can’t _ _ create, it can only copy _. A louder voice than the others hissed, as Link forced his way through obstacles that should have been designed to crush his spirit. Well, likely they were; it was only that Ganondorf was an incautious creator. 

_ A door might have b _ _ een better. He need only have locked it! _

_ No. The last time this one was presented a locked door, he sought out the key and opened the World of Deities. What good would it have done to bar his way with only a shut door? _

Link smiled despite himself. So he was known even to spirits! What was the phrase Gerudo liked?… All publicity was good publicity, if you could smile nice enough. 

There was a room with an organ. A man who wanted to destroy everything and had succeeded, and all for spite. Link remembered being separated from Navi long enough that he knew he never, ever wanted it again– and being reunited with the princess, the both of them ragged but drawing breath. 

He didn’t spend a lot of his time remembering the battle, except. 

Ganon’s eyes rolling back in his head. The crack of a skull splitting and the shudder it sent up his sword and into his shoulders. A curse laid on both of them who’d gotten out alive, the three of them really because _ the thing about grudges is you dig two graves, _and if Ganon cursed them to be haunted by his hatred that meant he had to stick around to haunt them- 

The significance isn’t lost on Link, in this. It's almost enough to distract him from his problems. (Ganondorf probably wouldn’t appreciate being relegated to the back burner just like that, but Link had other people on his mind before then and through then and by then. The bastard just wasn’t important enough to merit lingering thoughts.) 

And Ganondorf was dead, his spirit gone at least for then, and- 

The princess turned to him. The sky was turning blue again. Zelda had tears in her eyes. Navi was buzzing in his ears, shuddering and alive. 

The princess started to speak in a voice alike and unlike Sheik’s, “All of the tragedy that has befallen Hyrule is my fault… I was so young…” 

The wind is roaring and very nearly covers her words. Link shut his eyes and stood still: he saw the arc of Ganondorf’s body falling over and over. The first person he’d killed - until he remembered the iron knuckles and thought, _as far as I know _and then he was going to be sick, they needed to stop having this conversation so he could go back to the earth and vomit. 

It’s not really a conversation, though, because those have two sides and Zelda was really handling all of that herself. Link was only half listening, tuning in to some things and analyzing them to death and missing others wholesale. Nausea threatened to overwhelm him. He’d just survived a battle with the king of the Gerudo and everything else his mind insisted on replaying. 

_ Then we’ll talk- _

Link forgave himself the inattention. He was pretty sure it went unnoticed. 

When he listened to her, the princess’s voice was like temple bells; high and airy and booming and terrible. Like the voice of a God ringing in his ears, her words drowned out all the whispers the wind carried to him. 

“I couldn’t comprehend the consequences…” 

He thought, _ of course _ ** _ we _ ** _ couldn’t, _ but he didn’t say it and maybe it wasn’t worth trying anyway. Zelda was still apologizing, taking responsibility for both their choices without apologizing for the one she’d made that he _ actually holds against her _. 

Zelda said, “And I brought you into it. You, who should never have been burdened thus. I am sorry…” 

It wasn’t entirely fair – Zelda didn’t drag him into anything. She had her reasons to hide and to lie. The Great Deku Tree sent Link to Hyrule to chase a foggy destiny, and the Lost Woods had been menaced as surely as the rest of Hyrule. Maybe if he could have felt a little more than the edges of emotions over creeping numbness, he would care enough to argue the point. 

Navi buzzed around his ears and murmured something he couldn’t decipher. The princess watched them both, hands clasped in front of her breast. Link had nothing to say. 

Zelda did. She is never poor for words. “It is time for me to make up for my mistakes.” 

When Link looked at her, she was struggling to keep a strong face the same as the day they’d met and she had to be brave in the face of a stranger. 

“When you lay the Mastersword to rest,” Zelda smoothed her hands over her tattered dress. “The doors of time will be shut.” 

The roar of the wind disappeared. The temple of time rushed in on him, hallowed halls and great empty spaces where echoes live. It’s the first place he met Sheik, and the last place he _ saw _Sheik. No ice decorates the window eaves, but it feels cold and lonely as he’d dreamed it before. 

The mastersword left magic lingering with loneliness in his hand when he returned it. Time doesn’t shift for him. The sound of something sealing, past the corporeal world, is audible to him. _ Hylians can hear the gods. _Who told him that? 

The princess smiled and held out her hands to entreat him. “Return me the ocarina, Link, that I may return to you all the years you spent in service to Hyrule.” 

Link was cold. So cold he didn’t want to move. His hear thudded slow and heavy in his chest, and the air between them felt like an uncrossable tundra. 

“_ Link _ ,” Navi whispered against his ear, barely audible over the heavy _ thud thud _ of his blood. “ _ If you go back, no one will remember.” _ The feeling of wrongness in his gut solidified and c urled out its awful tendrils. _ What in the past… is worth going back to? _

Zelda’s hands tremble in the air between them. 

Link focused on Navi. She hovered just beside his cheek. He thought for a moment that he felt her touch his skin. “_ You would be alone, L _ _ ink.” _

“But- you’d remember?” He asked, and the little fairy flew to and fro a moment. A window above them was streaming light down and painted Navi radiant. 

Her light flickered. “… _ you would be alone.” _

Her next words were like sword blows. “I’ve stayed too long now. I’ll never forget you, Link.” She flew up towards the glass – Link is sure he shouted something, but not what. He will never ask Zelda to find out – and reached after her, but Navi avoided his fingers with a burst of speed. 

She flies where he cannot see her. He tries to watch her trail, but she is gone as if she stopped existing. The Ocarina of Time hung on his neck like a millstone. He imagines going back to when Navi is on his shoulder. She’s waiting if he only goes, isn’t she? 

But Navi left the past to come to the present. Zelda didn’t send her back. _You will be alone_. 

Maybe if he went he could stop Ganon before the takeover… but what was he supposed to do that he hadn’t done already? What about the appearance of a boy from the forest could convince a king, where his own daughter - gifted in magic, favored by a goddess _ \- _could not? 

Zelda reached forward and Link took another step back. 

He said, “I’m not going.” 

The princess’s eyes widened. Link was sure his were the same – forcing the words to deny her was an effort, like there was more to compel him than mere words. His fingers tightened on the ocarina. 

“I must have it back, Link.” The princess’s voice dropped to tones of begging. Link was distantly certain making a monarch beg counted as treason. “You could stop all of this- if you just- _ I want to fix this, Link.” _Her voice cracked and the feeling of wrongness washed over him greater than before. 

_ Listen to her _ _ listen to her you must listen or everything will be- _

“Please!” Link demanded, of Zelda, of the noise, of the infernal buzzing. He just needed quiet for a moment! He cared nothing for the Ocarina, but neither would he return to the past alone and small. “I can’t! I don’t want my childhood, I want –” 

He wanted Navi to fly back and tell him she’s kidding, haha, sorry for that horrid joke Link! He wanted Sheik to be real. He wanted to be remembered for something he’d done and not something he was or wasn’t, by accident of birth. 

He wanted to be somewhere he wasn’t a burden, was maybe even welcome. He was never those things for the Kokiri before he’d disappeared for seven years. He’d just been a curious out of place boy, the one without fairy and if he went back now, the one whose fairy _ left. _ The Deku tree was destined to die as all old things, making room for the new _ . _There was nothing to run back to. 

“You can have the ocarina – if you promise not to send me back.” Link realized that he didn’t trust Zelda, otherwise, not to make the choice for him anyway. As if she knows better than him his reason to abandon seven years alone, or deny that he can change what happens after. 

Zelda has an entire kingdom; she couldn’t understand ‘barely having a life to begin with’, Link is certain, or knowing something cannot be done even if you believe in the power of words. 

And then, why should he trust Zelda besides all of it? She had only trusted him when she had no other option. 

The princess’s face – sadness etched into the lines of her expression - neared nauseating him. Link wasn’t sure what she saw to dampen her mood so much. After all they were alive – they should have been celebrating. Even if he felt as if his guts were falling out, and her dress was surely beyond ruined and far from stately. 

(His tunic will wash out. It always has - the damn thing is magic, sure as he’s standing there.) 

Link’s legs trembled. He gave in and sunk down with his fingers tightening on the ocarina, settling it in his lap and close to him. His voice came out pleading. “_ Please _.” 

(_ Begging royalty, now? Well… that’s the opposite of treason. _One of the voices assured him. He was not assured.) 

Zelda stepped closer and bent down to take the sacred instrument from him. Her answer was a whisper, broken by resignation. 

“_ Okay _.” 

<3< 

The party was loud, colorful, lively and Link really would just like to lay down and sleep forever instead. There’s a curl of his mouth born of politeness for the other guests. Well – no, mostly for Malon. Malon was his friend, and had neither left him nor revealed that she is, _ surprise _, the princess he met briefly in a past life. 

He would say he isn’t bitter, but he also wasn’t much for lying. 

Malon made no comment of Link dogging her heels. She just smiled at him and kept the refreshments stocked. “It’s my duty as a host. I don’t let you go thirsty when you stay the night, do I?” 

Link didn’t think he understood, but he lacked the energy to ask. Malon was probably too distracted to offer further explanation anyway. If he wants to stay outside of the forest, there’s a lot of catching-up he’s do for. 

He’s not sure he wants to stay outside. He holds off on the supplementary lessons. 

“If you’re going to follow me,” Malon held a tray of glasses toward him with one hand. Link took it, expecting something light. He isn’t wearing the Gauntlets of Power and so nearly dropped the damn thing. How did she _ carry _it?! 

Malon gave him a puzzled look, then flashed him a smile. “Oh! Well… Milk buckets are heavier, Link.” She turned to look towards the entrance of the ranch. “Now, I think I see more guests coming? I’m gonna make-up another table. Go replace empties while I’m gone-...” 

Link noticed a pause at the end, lips open but no words and her gaze fixed on him like she wants to add something. 

With a twinge near his ribs, he wonders if it’s _ fairy-boy _. Malon is a good friend, even though the tray she’d just handed him smelled foul and weighed as much as a boulder. 

From where they stood he could see empty bottles on tables. He waded into the aisles between bodies to snap those up, while Malon jogged for the stables. No doubt she’d grab whatever wasn’t nailed down. That was what they had done with the house at noon. 

Malon wanted a party, Castletown was in shambles, Lonlon Ranch was basically equidistant to everyone, and Malon couldn’t travel. There might have been some argument but if there was Malon had won it. 

On arrival with a retinue Link didn’t want but hadn’t figured a way to avoid, he’d been greeted with Malon shouting. She had run up and _ hugged _ him like she’d thought he was dead, which, _ okay that’s entirely fair, _and lifted him to spin once. He’d floated on a cloud of warm fuzzies and near-tears for the rest of their conversation. 

In the present, Link passed out one of whatever was on the tray to Talon. 

Beside him sat Ingo, who squinted at the contents. “Is this the homebrew?” 

“Yes!” Talon crowed. He smelled strongly of the mysterious ‘homebrew’, like he’d soaked his mustache in it. Maybe, Link thought while looking at him, he _ did _ soak his mustache it in – eating had been a messy affair that evening to judge by looks. 

“Link…” Ingo’s voice was cautious. “Don’t drink any of that.” 

Any desire to argue Link might have had was quelled by a queasy stomach. The cups smelled sharp and _ foul. _

He wondered if that meant Ingo didn’t want any either. When he held out a mug, the ranch-hand shook his head and said something so curt that Link had to rewind it in his head to recognize ‘_ thank you _’. 

He shrugged and moved down the table, replacing empty glasses with full. 

A few minutes later Link saw Talon get up and stagger off in the direction of the house. It seemed a little off - as far as Link knew of hosting, which wasn’t much, the host shouldn’t go to bed halfway into the party… but maybe Malon was the only host? Or maybe this was an example of Talon’s uselessness, as Ingo groused. 

A stranger slid into the abandoned seat next to Ingo as if they’d been awaiting the opportunity. Link looked at them, simply because he didn’t recognize them from any particular place he’d visited. 

They were wrapped in a dark cloak like the one he’d slept under in the Temple of Time, and they were small, with brown hands with pale scars across the back. 

Link felt his heart stutter; he took two steps back towards them with the tray – then the princess passed by on his other side and reality caught up. Link had watched Sheik become another illusion in a journey full of them. 

There was no way the stranger was Sheik, and it was unlikely they were even Sheikah. Link wanted to check anyway – to look and see that he was wrong. Perhaps then reality would sink in. He moved towards the stranger, cautious and quiet - 

Behind him was a loud, terrible, _ familiar _ whoop. It echoed. Weight hit his back like the loving embrace of a moblin on a bender. A voice bellowed “ _ LINK!” _straight in his ear. 

And, it must be said; the tray he held went flying. 

“_ Nabooru,” _ was what he’d tried to say, but it came out more as a wheeze with her _ crushing the air out of his lungs. “You’re not dead” _would have been next, if he could only speak. 

“You’re alive!” Nabooru cheered, as if it were news to the both of them. “And here!... and alive!” 

“Undignified.” Another familiar voice muttered, and when Link looked up from under red-tan-white-gleeful there was a zora with hands on wide hips… he kept looking up… Ruto. Ruto was frowning at them. Well. 

Nabooru made a rude noise and flapped a hand at the Zora princess as if doing so could physically banish her. “It’s a party! Lighten up, gills!” 

Ruto handled being referred to by a bit of her anatomy about as well as could be expected. She bristled, as much as a Zora could bristle, and she gave Nabooru a look like a particularly ugly vulture had landed in her lake to bathe. At least, Link thought, she didn’t take the ceremonial trident from her back to spear Nabooru on. (He thought it must be ceremonial. He’d never seen her wield one otherwise.) 

“You must be joking.” Ruto tipped her chin back in disdain, without acknowledging the moniker. She stared down Nabooru’s (slightly threatening, in Link’s experience) grin a moment. Then her eyes flickered down to Link and softened a little, like steel after you’ve smacked it with a hammer some few dozen times. “Link.” Ruto bowed at the waist to him (as well as she could with the weapon, which wasn’t much at all). It seemed overzealous when he was still pinned to the grass by Nabooru in alarming proximity to cow shit, but Link wasn’t royalty and he wouldn’t presume to tell them how to behave. … well. Today, anyway. 

Ruto murmured, “My pleasure at seeing you here cannot be expressed in anything so crude as words… how fare you after your trials?” 

It took a moment to parse, and once he’d managed hat. Link wondered what nobility had against saying ‘Oh I’m so happy to see you! Are you okay?’ _ Saria _ managed it fine. 

“Good. Thanks.” He mumbled against the dirt. Nabooru made no effort to get up and let him breathe – on the contrary she was now dragging him into a headlock. “How’re you… Ow!” Knuckles, knuckles dragging over his scalp. He struggled for freedom. “Nabooru!” 

Ruto reacted as if he’d finished the question with something other than a cry of pain and widened her smile, straightening up and settling a hand on her waist. “Better for having seen you, my dearest. But I shouldn’t keep you – as much as I enjoy monopolizing your time, you _ are _the man of the hour.” She gave Link a smile that was probably meant to be flirtatious but only managed to be marginally less icy than the looks reserved for the Gerudo. 

Ruto gave him another shallow bow, to the amusement of the Zora flanking her. One caught Link’s eye and winked at him. 

“May we meet again soon, Link.” 

Link watched her glide away, and then pondered how he might get Nabooru to _ get off of him _ so he might greet her properly. Possibly with a yank of her ponytail. “Nabooru? Ow. Nabooru.” 

“So happy to see you, kid! And with all your limbs!” Ferocious noogieing. Pain. 

“_ Nabooru.” _

“Nabooru, he’s bleeding.” Another Gerudo said, and Nabooru finally swore and rolled off him. Link lunged after her for a hug. They hit the grass and – yes, he really was bleeding, that was blood on his sleeve and Malon wasn’t going to be pleased, _ oops _ – he pressed his forehead into Nabooru’s shoulder. 

“Hey,” Nabooru said, voice dropping a little in volume. It almost sounds sober, though he’s never known her to be. “This is a little more than I expected. We’re practically strangers, no?” She didn’t push him away. One of her hands cupped between his shoulder-blades and smoothed itself out there. “Even if you saved me, and whatever. Good job on that, by the way. Really appreciate it.” 

Link pressed his tongue to the roof of his mouth, against a memory of blood. “I thought…” _ you were dead, _ and his throat dried up. Nabooru wrapped her arms around him and made a questioning noise. Link remembered her almost killing him as the Iron Knuckle and being carted off by the witches after and- _ well _ . Um. Maybe it was better not to finish that thought. Instead he breathed, “ _ Hi! _” 

He got off of Nabooru after, because unlike some people he had basic manners. Don’t lay on people, don’t knock them over when they’re carrying trays, don’t watch someone struggle without helping unless they _ really _deserve it! and so on. He was sure Saria was furious with pride. 

A group of Gerudo stood watching them. Link recognized some, fortress guards who’d caught him and tossed him into a cell mostly. Link waved - they exchanged glances he couldn’t decipher, before waving back. “Anyway.” Nabooru said, as if they weren’t just rolling in the grass in the middle of the party. “Hey. So, I’m a sage.” She patted his hair, like he was a dog or a little kid. 

Link bit his lip to keep from smiling at her. “You… mentioned.” In the Spirit Temple. Loudly. 

Nabooru cracked her knuckles, “Which means, you know, that _ I _ know. That you.” 

He blinked, made a noise so she’d continue. “Um?” 

Her eyes glittered. She poked his chest. “I know that _ you _shouldn’t be here.” 

Rude. Link wasn’t sure how to respond to that, so he was left squinting. 

Nabooru continues with a jaunty shrug and averted eyes, “I’m glad you are, kid. You belong with us.” Then she ruffled his hair, as if she hadn’t done enough damage, and knocked his hat to the ground. He snatched it up to clutch. 

“Oh, and yeah,” She continued, “You’re gonna go through this with everyone, cause we aaaaall heard you tell the princess no.” 

Link thought about that; he had three more sages to go through. Impa, Saria, Darunia. The first of those will probably talk to him like a normal person, after appearing out of nowhere and giving him a heart attack. Saria will probably hug him around the waist and say she’s glad he’s alright. Darunia… will probably want to hug him… but with no regard for Link’s poor, fragile Hylian body. Goron strength was not kind to such bodies. Link remembered the ominous creaking that was a highlight of Goron hugs, then imagined his own injured ribs making those sounds. Thought, _ I should hide _. 

“Hey, look,” Nabooru was far too gleeful for his peace of mind. Her big, buff retinue of Gerudo warriors turned to obey her, looking at something Link wasn’t tall enough to see. Something Link realized he could _ hear _: the bellowing of male voices… 

“The Gorons are here.” Actually, Nabooru should be banned from smiling because whenever she bothered she looked like a hungry wolfos. 

Link forced himself to his feet and hurried away from the noise. One of the Gerudo turned back to make a grab for him. 

“Wait! Link, your arm-” 

“Thanks Aveil good to see you I should go away bye.” Link ducked her hand and dashed for cover, pressing a hand to the bleeding laceration that so concerned her. Behind him, Darunia could be heard bellowing his name. Link was not ready. His stitches were still fresh! 

“You’ll face down monsters but not your friends?” Nabooru called, laughing at him. 

Link called back, “_ Yes!” _ And continued running. Surely he’d reach the barn before the Gorons broke through the crowd! At least, he really hoped so. 

He felt his stitches pull and was forced to hobble. Still, he _ did _make it before they spotted him. 

<3< 

Unaware of the distress her beloved fiance was in, Ruto was just settling for a chat across from the newest citizen of her domain (a young minstrel, brave and handsome). She looked up just in time to watch Link go pelting by. Everyone at the end of the table turned to watch without moving to interfere. 

“The hero of Hyrule, everyone.” The farmer near them announced after a moment, waving as if they needed the indication. Ruto scrutinized him a moment looking for an identifying feature before deciding she didn’t know him. Hylians all looked so similar, though of course her Link was a very handsome example of one. … Probably. _ She _liked how he looked and that was the important bit. 

The minstrel let out a little laugh. His voice was pleasant, even if the words weren’t honeyed. “Did you propose to him again, princess?” 

Ruto turned a stern look on the man across from her – he smiled back, raised his glass as if toasting the question. Ruto took a moment to wonder if she _ really _wished to let him join in the glories of safeguarding Hyrule’s waterways. 

He had a useful skillset, some political connections, and he was reasonably cunning. He was brave enough to rescue her from Ganondorf’s ice and his minions. And, when he kept his mouth shut, he was reasonably handsome. 

(The last trait really had no sway when she’d granted him citizenship, but it helped to remind herself of it now). So yes, she decided, she did want to keep him. Barely, and maybe with a gag on hand. 

Ruto picked up her glass. “I did no such thing – on the contrary I left him with that brute Nabooru. Whatever it is is probably her doing.” She scanned the table for anything she could eat. 

A plate of roast fish and fried crickets was pushed in front of her. She was secretly and obscenely grateful, because _ none of that was food _ and _ what are all of you thinking _. 

“The rest is vegetables and poultry, your grace.” Her minstrel paused a moment, “And perhaps pork.” 

“What’s wrong with pork?” The skinny farmer grumbled at him. 

Her minstrel frowned at him and muttered back, “Well for starters, she’s a fish? 

Ruto choose very magnanimously to ignore this slander on her race – her lovely subject _ was _talking to a bumpkin Hylian who had likely never met a Zora before, let alone a royal one – and looked for a fork. 

(Zora did not use forks, of course, but she’d learned long ago that Hylians used them. For the sake of diplomacy, Zora dining with Hylian nobility would adopt the mannerism.) 

… There were _ none _ . _ Why. _

Her minstrel turned back to look at her. Ruto glanced at him in the midst of seeking a utensil to eat with besides her _ fi _ _ ngers. _ Something a little like panic was building in her chest _ . _She couldn’t eat with her fingers outside the domain! And, surrounded by Hylians?! Was this an insult?! There was nothing! She crossed her arms and stared at the table. 

Gods damn it, she was _ h _ _ ungry. _

Her minstrel arched his brows. “You aren’t eating, highness?” 

“Of course not.” Ruto tipped her head back. “I am a lady.” 

Her minstrel considered it. After a look down at her complete and unacceptable lack of cutlery, he reached into a pouch on his side to produce – Ruto squinted at them. A pair of whittled sticks, bound together by twine. She was not sure what purpose he meant them to serve when he asked, “Will these do?” 

She eyed them. Forks with one tong seemed strange and ineffective, but she supposed they’d suffice in such a pinch. It was a long journey home. 

“Please. And thank you, my dear.” 

He removed the twine and gave them to her. 

After one moment where she stared at both sticks in consternation Ruto raised them – one in each hand – to spear a piece of food. 

The minstrel’s eyes widened. Ruto paused at the look on his face, or what she could see of it. Was she doing this wrong?... But this was how one used forks. Surely land dwellers did not have such similar tools with altogether different functions? 

The minstrel looked away from her, likely well-aware that she had stopped to wait on his cue. Of course she was royalty, but he was the land dweller by birth and by upbringing, and therefore more versed in the appropriate etiquette. When he said nothing, and picked up his drink to sniff it, Ruto relaxed a margin. Perhaps he’d only assumed she would need assistance. Well, she didn’t. She began to eat, doing her best to break off small pieces without aid of a knife. 

No one was staring now. Clearly it was fine. 

She told herself this even when the retinue of Sheikah that followed Lady Impa into the fray - er, party - all paused to stare, apparently incredulous, at her dining implements and their contents. It was probably her scooping up the bugs with bits of fish, but they were too crunchy for her to resist. 

Her minstrel was staring after the Sheikah when she looked up again. He had his brows furrowed and his lips parted, like he wanted to call after them. Perhaps he found himself wondering why he wasn’t following on their heels - Ruto did not know for certain, but she thought he must have been from Kakariko originally. Before it was open. 

It’s not so far from the domain that she would forbid him a trek back there, if he thought of it. If he asked. 

It could be he was thinking of nothing important at all, but her curiosity was piqued. Ruto reached across and nudged his hand. “I can’t help but wonder if you regret it?” 

He didn’t react to her, and watched the Sheikah a heartbeat longer before he could tear away his gaze. “… no. I don’t, my Lady.” 

“Did you live in Kakariko before?” She lowered her voice, “I really won’t hold it against you if you miss it.” 

His lips curled but his eyes stay the same. Not a real smile, but a polite one by the reckoning of the landdwellers. “I suppose you could call it that, Lady Ruto. But I’ve wandered longer than I’ve stayed. It holds no special attachment for me.” 

He looked away in the direction of the barn. Ruto drummed her fingers on the rough wood of the table. A drifter could have useful information, but they could also become a liability where she needed someone attached and loyal. “And what about Zora’s Domain?” 

His lips twitched, emphasizing the half-formed scar marring the lower. Ruto peered at the stitches holding it shut. 

_ Why didn’t you have a potion? _She wondered, and vowed that he would be outfitted better under her. Zora did not let their own suffer needlessly. 

His answer was smooth. “I’m sure I will grow attached to it with time, your grace. It is my home for at least the year. Unless… if you have need of me elsewhere… I can make myself at home wherever is most useful to the Domain.” 

Ruto thought she could see doors opening for them. 

“You don’t mind traveling?” She pushed back her empty plate before returning the sticks – he accepted them with his head bowed, and tucked them back in their case. 

“Name the place and the time.” He flashed her a genial smile. “I have the honor to be your obedient servant.” 

Ruto set her cheek in her hand, a smile tugging her mouth. “You’ll have to come back to the domain a while. I need to get some things together before we can manage it, but…” Her voice lowered, “I was thinking of the wetter bit of Laketower… what do you think?” 

Her minstrel tilted his head back and answered in a whisper she could scant hear over the revelry. 

“The crater-lake? Or Weiss?” 

“Weiss,” Ruto murmured, “The swamp.” 

The minstrel cocked his head. “Why there?” 

She considered him fondly for asking. It’s a border territory to Hyrule, barely a blip on the radar because the South Sea’s reefs kept it safe from invaders. Bremen was the only real place of note there, and it had largely steered clear of the war. Soon it would be sending gifts and nobles to try to obfuscate that detail, Ruto figured. 

It also hosted a great deal of red Zora, hostile to the land-dwellers polluting their waters. 

“Something in the rivers is making Zora sick, there. They had sent word not long before my Domain was frozen – I could do nothing for it. But now I have you, my dear.” She flashed him a smile that he took a moment to return. She noticed that he only had four pointed teeth to her mouthful; the rest of his were quite blunt. _ However can he eat like that? _

The minstrel blinked at her. This time when he smiled, his eyes crinkled. “You need only say the word and I will depart, Lady.” 

His promise was so solemn that Ruto felt obliged to respond in kind. “Not yet, my knight.” She folded a hand over his on the tabletop, thinking. They needed to outfit him with proper supplies, to be sure he knew how to handle anything the water might offer him, and to equip him with weapons and tools for his work. Rupees would also be an issue. 

“One other thing, dear,” She started, peering closely at the minstrel. “I notice you are unmasked today?” 

His smile fell back to politeness. It looked uncomfortable, with the stitches. “The material pulls at the wound, Lady. I pray you’ll forgive my indecency in the matter.” 

Ruto blinked at him. “No- no, it’s nothing like that. I just- well. Whatever made the mark. It is taken care of?” 

The minstrel’s eye flickered strangely. “It is no longer a problem, Lady.” 

“If it is a problem,” Ruto frowned, “You need only say so, and I will have it handled.” 

The minstrel’s eye crinkled again, though he stopped trying to smile. “You are very kind. Look, it is already healing, and the stitches will disappear in a few days.” 

She thought land-dwellers took longer to heal than that. “And the cause of your hurt has been neutralized?” 

“As much as it can be. I am away from it, and it shall not touch another as it has touched me.” His expression went distant. “Pray that it doesn’t, for its own sake and the sake of everyone else.” “That’s a little ominous, my dear.” Ruto murmured. 

The minstrel shrugged. “I’ve always had a gift for melodrama. I hope you’ll forgive a performer his quirks, Lady?” 

Ruto was not entirely sure she should put it out of mind. But she could not help someone that did not want her assistance. “Of course I will, if you ask it. But if something else happens- well. We do have potions, my dear.” “Don’t worry, Lady.” The minstrel said, touching the stitches on his lip gently. “I doubt it will even scar,” 

<3<

Outside there was a party celebrating their triumph over Ganondorf, and Link was in a barn with a horse trying to eat his hat. 

He tried not to meditate overmuch on the unfairness of life, but this seemed remarkable even for the injustices he’d faced. 

Another horse knickered and stamped its hooves. Link heard a creak - the noise of the party grew louder a moment then muffled again. Someone with light feet made their way across the hay with soft scuffling sounds. 

He tucked himself a little further into the corner he’d taken to hiding in. Green shoes appeared under the door. 

“Hup!” Two hands appeared on the wood of the gate – a little head of green hair followed. Link stared for a moment, and Saria stared back at him, grinning and hanging from a stall door by her arms. 

“… this isn’t the forest.” Link said, because it wasn’t, and he was very tired and so had even less to say than usual. 

“_ Hello, Saria _.” Saria corrected him, because she insists on manners always. “Hello, Link!” 

“Hello.” Link tried. “I’m happy, but – this isn’t the forest?” This was concerning. “Are you a Hylian too?” Or going to die, he didn’t ask. He didn’t want her to die. 

“No. Don’t be silly, Link.” Saria swung her legs over the side of the gate and drops to the hay with a muffled _ thump _. “It’s been seven years, and I haven’t changed. And. I’ve got green hair. And leaves.” She tapped one sticking out near the crown of her head, gold from autumn – in the spring she’d have a circlet of new growth instead. 

“But Kokiri die if they leave the woods, don’t they?” Link got up to meet her halfway and wrapped her in a hug – now she was so little, barely half his size – then tucked her under his chin where he knew she was safe. 

“The Great Deku Tree might have exaggerated that.” Saria tipped her head back. “The Great Deku Sprout said he probably did it because he was worried about creepy adults! I’m not sure what he meant, but we can leave… So we came to see you here!” She beamed. “I missed you so much, Link. I know you had to go…” And nuzzled him, like a squirmy cat. He nuzzled her back happily. “The forest wasn’t the same without you!” 

A pang ran through him. He sank to the hay holding Saria – she settled on his legs and wrapped her arms around his shoulders, like he was in danger of untangling himself and escaping. 

Link huffed a little against her hair, shutting his eyes on tears. “I missed you too. And the forest. I…” He squeezed her gently, unsettled by how small she was in his arms. “I really want to go home, Saria.” 

“You’re always welcome back, Link.” Saria pressed her forehead to his cheek – it felt odd, but her touch was warm and the closeness felt like something he’d long been missing. “I’m the sage of the Forest. If anyone can then, I should be able to guide you to the Kokiri Woods safely.” She stroked his hair with both hands, lowered her voice, “You can come home.” 

Link let out the breath he’d been holding. His shoulders sagged. Tears threaten to spill down his cheeks. “Okay.” 

<3<

The party wound down to a few straggling drinkers in the wee hours of morning. Link left the barn then to seek out the princess. He didn’t want an audience, but he thought she’d probably be awake a while longer. With a day like theirs had been, sleep shouldn’t come- easy. 

Most of the guests were curled up on hay-beds, tucked under traveling cloaks. A few had bed rolls. Maybe three had tents, from what Link could see in the moonlight. 

The princess was awake, and easy to spot – she’d switched out the ruined formal attire for a white shift. It looked much easier to walk in, though like it might tangle in her legs if she tried to run. _ Brave of her, _Link thought. Then again, she had an armed escort now. 

The dress moves enough that when the wind blows, or she walks too quickly, he can see bandages wrapping her ankles. Her feet were bare and her hair was loose down her back in tangled half-washed locks. 

Halfway to her side Link noticed she has a companion, only because they excuse themselves. Well. Actually, it was better to say they bowed to Zelda then hurried off like Link was poisonous. Link stopped in speaking distance of the princess, and watched the navy blue cloak recede until the night swallowed it. 

Zelda turned to him and jumped. “Link! You’re up late… is all well?” Her smile didn’t quite reach her eyes. 

Link didn’t wonder too much about it – he wasn’t exactly feeling stellar _ without _ the stress of a kingdom in shambles. Hyrule now was nothing like it had been when he left the forest, and the failure lay half and half between them. … thirds between them and Ganon? Hmm. 

It was a little strange to think it was months ago for him and seven years for the world. 

He wondered if Zelda resented him for refusing to go back. _ I could maybe stop myself from opening the door, _ he thought, _ but there’s no way I could stop Ganondorf from taking the castle. _They won’t ever know for certain. 

_The_ _doors of time are shut. _

It’s a comfortable sort of curse. 

“I’m going back to the forest tomorrow.” He watched the princess of Hyrule jolt like she’s been shot at. Or… not - the look on her face was a little star-struck, distinctly hopeful. 

“Then, you’ve changed your mind?” She clasped her hands at her chest, as before. “Of course, I can send you back whenever you desire. You need only say the word, Link!” 

“Thank you.” Link watched her light up a moment longer. His gaze lingered on the ocarina strung about her neck. When her hand crept towards it he added, “But I don’t want to go back to my time. Just the woods. I’m leaving with Saria and the others tomorrow.” 

She shrunk back from him, and he felt sort of bad but not especially terrible. She had, after all, been lying to him for most of a year: acting the part of a friend he’d never really had. 

“Oh… I had thought…” Her gaze flickered, “That perhaps you were staying…” 

Link didn’t let her finish that time. “I’m glad I could help you save this Kingdom, princess.” He kept his gaze steady on hers, “But I don’t really belong in it.” 

She flinched like it was a physical blow. 

Link gave her a wan smile and turned to look southward. “I want to go home.” He hadn’t the energy to explain himself further. 

Zelda folded her hands under her chest and turned her face away from him. “I understand.” Her words came out stilted, “I had hoped that, perhaps- I know I did you a great wrong in repayment for a great service.” Something very near pain entered her voice, “And I am sorry- but I had hoped we could be friends, in spite of that. I… apologize if that sounds naïve.” 

Link didn’t mull over the response with any care- actually, it fell off of his tongue before he even realized he was going to speak. “You lied.” 

Zelda turned wide, bright, sky-blue eyes on him. They look wet – Link hastened to add, “I’m not angry.” Which is mostly not a lie now that he sees it hurting her, too. “I know you had to! But I can’t… Zelda, you _ lied _about everything.” 

It was one thing to lie about who she was. He could handle that, really. But… 

She is definitely starting to cry. “Link- _ everything _ wasn’t…” 

“Wasn’t it?” … he couldn’t handle becoming friends with that lie. 

Zelda’s eyes widened. Her mouth shut so fast her teeth clicked, swallowing whatever she wanted to say in favor of silent tears. 

Making her cry really hadn’t been his intention. How did one help…? Link waffled, one hand coming up in an awkward attempt to – what? Pat her on the shoulder? 

He didn’t get long to agonize. “You’re right.” Zelda sounded ragged, but her words came out clear. “I, I’m very sorry. Link- please don’t leave before saying goodbye in the morning.” She shifted a step back, turned half away. “But, I should, I must sleep.” She bowed to him and said, “Good evening!” Then turned to run. Her gait was staggering and slow, but the intent of it kept Link from even thinking of following. He watched her disappear into the myriad of tents scattering the field. 

Behind him comes a long, low whistle. He whirled around, grabbing for a sword he doesn’t have anymore. His back is too light without the steel of the Mastersword, Link realized unhappily; he really ought to replace it somehow. 

Malon was behind him. She had a bucket on her hip, and she looked a little puzzled and besides that unimpressed. 

“Malon!” Link flushed. That had been _ private! _

She blinked at him. “You just broke her heart, didn’t you, fairy boy. That was _ cold.” _

And he was back to fairy boy. It lasted a few hours, anyway. The twinge of pain is offset by the comfort of familiarity. 

“It was nothing like that!... well, it was sort of like that…” 

It was in fact exactly like that. 

“Yeah, okay.” Malon rolled her eyes. She held out the bucket, and Link took it. It was almost as big as his ribs and heavy, filled almost to spilling with water. He strained to hold it. 

“Talk and walk. C’mon.” She gave him a smack on the butt. 

Link jumped, splashing some of the water on his tunic - that was unpleasant, the night was cool and the water was _ cold _\- and jogged towards the house with Malon herding him. “We’re filling the water tank. Hop to!” 

Link jogged halfway before he felt comfortable slowing. And why not? He was already wet, and at least it warmed him. He got a pat on the arm when Malon caught up. He looked at her, and she asked, “Lover’s spat?” 

Link colored and looked away. 

Malon arched her brow at him, face illuminated by the porch-light. “Okay. Failed love… confession?” She twirled her wrist in a doomed-to-failure attempt to illustrate whatever had gone down. 

“No?” Link hazarded. “No. I don’t… look, just because I _ look _like an adult…” He paused next to the house. Beside the water tank was a pile of (unused) crates along with filled-to-bursting burlap sacks that Link had yet to discern the use of. 

Malon waited him out. 

“I’m not interested in the princess that way.” Link stopped in front of the water tank, and Malon moved to unlock and open it. “I really, really hope she isn’t interested in me.” Pause. “Given everything.” 

“You gonna tell me about that everything?” Malon took the water from him and stared him down until he dropped to one knee. Link cupped his hands and made her a lift - Malon stepped up delicate as a cat and dumped the bucket into the open neck. He hears the water slosh into the belly of the tank. 

“You haven’t really told me everything yet.” Malon said once she was down and Link was on his feet again. “I was sort of expecting, y’know, an explanation. Once your quest was over. And hey! It’s over.” She shut the lid again; it locked with a hollow _ thunk _ . “Ho pefully the drought with it, ’cause I am _ so _ tired of filling this by hand…” 

“What do you do when I’m not here to give you a boost?” Link wondered, shaking his hands out. Hard rubber _ hurt _ and Malon was _ heavy _. 

Malon turned a wicked smile on him. “Of course, I make Mr. Ingo give me a piggy back ride.” 

Link stared at her. Malon was almost as tall as Ingo… and much sturdier looking, but he’d seen little men do things he wouldn’t think them capable of either, like Sheik- wait. No. He hurried to reconsider. 

Like Grog managing to walk from Kakariko to the Lost Woods. That was something Link had never expected a tired, weak Hylian to manage. Who knew what healthy, fit and cranky ones were capable of? 

Malon burst into laughter before he could think of a response. “You didn’t believe me, right? Link! I pull over a box.” She pointed out the pile of crates with one finger, and Link blinked at them. 

_ Oh. _“What are the bags for?” 

“Sandbags. They’re good for redirecting flood water…” Malon put her hands on her hips, “Not that _ that’s _been a problem for ages.” They stood still a moment, before Malon slanted him a rueful grin. “Hey. I’ve got more to do before bed. Mr. Ingo promised to milk the cows, so I don’t have to worry about being up in a few hours. You wanna help me out, and I’ll listen to everything that’s happened since we met…” She started to walk, head cocked, “A million years ago?” 

Link blinked at her bad math and fell into step. “We met seven years ago. And for me it’s only been a few months.” 

“Pfft!” Malon waved a hand. “We’ll catch you up on figures of speech later.” 

“Oh…” Link went with her, and told her everything. Malon looked… more than a little worried by the end, but he supposed that was reasonable. He didn’t know that he was calm about it either, and he’d lived it. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For anyone curious: the suture used for the minstrel's mouth is something called catgut, which is made of sheep intestines. It reacts a lot with the body and tends to cause scarring; so he's telling a pretty bald-faced lie.
> 
> Special thanks to MyouTakara, CottonCandyHaze, and other friends for sitting through my confused rambles, helping me decide things when I've made a mess of them, and generally making sure this story is better than if I had made it all by myself. You guys have my heart, and I'm forever grateful.  
Other special thanks to the Zelda fandom back on FFnet almost a decade ago, to the friend that got me into Zelda in the first place (and led to me meeting new friends) and any one who likes my silly stories enough to read them to the end.


	3. Afterimage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The minstrel tries to gain some information on his newest contract.   
Tries. He swears his bad luck should be legendary...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for blood-letting and drinking. In all fairness, this story is going to have some horror and violence imagery in most chapters. I'll try to warn for it, but I may miss things, so please take care reading.  
This chapter is not proofread, but MissMonie did do a read-over for me last minute. Thank you again! All mistakes are mine.

In a city a few days’ ride south of the Lost Woods, located smack in the middle of a swamp, there was a city called Bremen. In the heart of that city, perched on a rooftop with the precarious balance of a carrion bird, perched a pretty minstrel. The buildings beside his were built close enough that their sagging roofs touched in an inverted arch over his perch, flanking him and offering a modicum of security. 

Chain mail glittered in the noontime sun with each shift and flash of black tabards. The guards wer e out enmasse. He stared at them all had a brief, mad moment where he wondered if every guard the city  _ employed _ was indeed on shift just then.

But no, that was ridiculous. At least some of them had to be indisposed, or guarding the homes of the nobility. R ight? Yet there were a disproportionate number of guards on the street below him: at least fifteen for one little street. Ridiculous.

Even if it was the street that led to the manor-house the Duke and his family lived in, sure. In the county seat. He wasn’ t sure he’d ever seen so many guards in Castletown outside of parade days, and even then he had to compare it to a time before the seven year war. Really this was all very excessive, and he resented the burden it put on his task for the day. How was he sup posed to spy on things if the guards were so insistent on swarming like hornets from an upset hive?

The minstrel took a moment to really revel in his own resentment. He’d traded to be a lap hound and this was the thanks he got? Unbelievable. Once he got ba ck to the domain he was resigning.

(Well, no, he wasn’t and couldn’t. Princess Zelda had kept his head out of the guillotine basket, but princess Ruto was keeping him sheltered, clothed and fed for another year’s contract. For the sake of his mood he valia ntly ignored that; sometimes complaining about circumstances helped bleed off the frustration enough to  _ do something  _ about them.)

A week ago the minstrel had arrived and set up a place to camp in the swamp, with a few safety caches of his supplies in diffe rent places. It wasn’t a safe place to sleep, which kept out unwanted guests pretty well. 

The Red Zora thought him mad. They’d appeared in front of his little punting boat to stop him, before he ended up in water too deep for navigating in such a vessel a nd  _ tried  _ to lead him to the Red Zora’s domain. 

_ “I can’t stay there. It’s too far from the city,” _ he’d pointed out to the messenger that had met him.  _ “And if you’re at war with the Hylians, the last thing you should need or want is a land-dweller hanging  _ _ around… right?” _

She hadn’t seem convinced of his logic. But their Lady Ruto trusted him, so there was little they could do about it. 

_ “I’m here to investigate why corpses are making their way into your swamp, then?”  _

_ The messenger gave him a quiet, guarded _ _ look. “On the contrary… we have found it. We would like you to find who is doing it, and to stop them.” _

_ “It isn’t Hylians becoming lost?” _

_ “No. I have never known the woods to cut their bodies with knives.” _

So, he wasn’t looking for a monster but a serial  killer. Which was. Wonderful, really.

The messenger had helped him establish another cache at a crossroad for dead drops, so they need not be seen together by a stray hunter or wandering witch. And then the minstrel had headed towards the city, to scope ou t its walls and entrances. 

( _ If you’ve known, why didn’t you write as much?  _ Was the first message he’d left in their drop. He wanted to see if the person answering the letters would have different answers than the Zora that had met him.

His contact had lef t him a simple response, just that morning:  _ Mail isn’t safe.) _

The _problem_ with Weiss was that some disgusting creature was dumping _corpses _in the swamp, starting with one every three months, two years prior. About eleven months ago it escalated, and had kept doing so; and now they saw one or two corpses each month. Two together on a recent night. As the water flowed in and out of the pools with corpses, it carried contamination with it.

What the Red Zora didn’t know was who or what had decided to pile the p lace up with people-made-carrion like it was an old battlefield. The bodies were results of foul play, so it was probable the minstrel would be making a corpse out of the person(s) responsible for all the other corpses. It was unpleasant and dirty work; al most comfortingly akin to the last nine years of his life.

Weiss was properly called the Laketower region, but that name was a little… depressing… and most locals ignored as much, and simply called it after the shining color of the region’s most prolific p lant-life. Any little hill or raised patch of ground was home to birch trees; brilliant white and with the eyes of their bark always watching. 

The place had a sort of ethereal quality, even to someone who had trained in temples and graveyards and dead places. It put the minstrel’s teeth on edge. 

_ How can anyone live here? _ He wondered,  _ With the trees watching, with the dead listening? _

But the Hyli ans of Weiss seemed inured to both of these concerns, and went about their days as Hylians in any place did. 

All of the bodies turned up near Bremen or the little towns and farms that ringed it, so that was where the minstrel went looking. 

About an hour  walk north from the city was a cluster of hunting lodges and summer villas, stretching out along the inner border of the county. He’d heard there were also some in the swamp, but didn’t lend it much credence; the conditions would destroy homes kept there.

Of the people that lived and worked in Bremen there were nobles - he hoped to avoid those. Nobles only brought trouble. 

Worse was that there were a few knights who were known even in the North; mostly heroes and veterans of the Civil War of almost two dec ades past. 

Sir Orrin of the Eelweed - a relic with a strange name and a reclusive personality. 

Another had become Knight Captain before Ganondorf’s takeover, probably first generation: the minstrel had never heard of any knight named Voss. The name itsel f was an oddity; Hylian noble names were usually more in the vein of Hyrule or Lanayru or Rosenthal. 

Last there was the father of the current Duke, a former knight himself and damnably high-born: Dietrich Rosenthal (nee Auer), of the same stock as Hyrule’ s idiot king. 

Ideally he could steer clear of all of them, but especially the last: he did not wish to be recognized by someone whose words could reach the King. 

The minstrel had spent the better part of his day canvassing for fresher information, with r eticent citizens and poor luck. The handful of tips he’d gotten had felt  _ off,  _ one being that the Duke was staying in the countryside to be closer to Hyrule proper (an assertion wildly incongruent with the number of guards he’d seen roaming). Another had b een that the knight captain had been seen heading for the slums, which made as much sense as the guards swarming the main road to the Duke’s manor while he was ‘out of town’. 

Something wasn’t right even for the conditions he was used to working under. He  hoped his poor luck would let him survive it. 

There were guards on each of the manor’s entrances; the minstrel watched for a long time, but no one came in or out; not even courtiers. He sat there for the better part of his morning and watched the shifts c hange. In that time no one inside passed by a window that he could see. 

Perhaps someone had gotten a tip that there was a foreign agent in the walls, and security measures included a mass of guards in public eye and some seeding of misinformation?

It was also possible that the manor was an empty decoy, though that required something to hide, somewhere else to hide it, and an idea that all of this needed hiding. Or exceptional paranoia in a monarch that the nobility were indulging for… some purpose.  He dismissed that concern; how would indulging a paranoid ruler benefit them?

( _ Might keep their heads out of a guillotine basket. _ )

Okay, so maybe he didn’t dismiss it. He just… tucked it away with  _ more information needed  _ tagged on it. 

The town was papered with colorful posters. Ugly things, for all their paint and pomp, but not new things. Not really. The guard-swarm might have been a show of power, or the presage to a pogrom. 

It probably wasn’t the beginning of a pogrom. But his heart thudded a little he avier in his breast.

_ It’s possible they’ve hired mercenaries to wear the uniform and pad their numbers. _ After all, Ganondorf had done that, and it had won him a kingdom. For seven years, anyway; ages longer than some rightful monarchs had ruled.

His origin al objective had been the public foyer of the house, and failing that he’d hoped to find a window. Now both seemed unattainable; the minstrel accepted his fate and switched his focus from infiltration to reconnaissance. There was no escaping unseen to a bo lt hole until darkness fell, anyway.

#

Most of the people on the main street were pale, and clad in jewel-tone fabrics. There was an intersecting road that, if one followed it right, led to a myriad of pricey boutiques. If it was like Castletown before the war, it was the sort of place you could find anything had you only the gold it cost.  _ You could probably,  _ the minstrel thought,  _ even find a place to buy people, if you look with enough care.  _ If one went left on the same road, they would find themselves sur rounded by the townhouses of Weiss’s nobility. 

Most of the people on the street were safe to identify as Hylians. They way they comported themselves, if nothing else, was a giveaway - and they never looked  _ up _ like even the youngest child in Kakariko was t rained to. He saw a few civilians with darker skin, closer to his, that mingled with the pale stock of Weiss. Most had impractical clothes that painted them as tourists. They made up less than a fifth of the people on the street. The guards found the outsi ders at least as noteworthy as the minstrel did, since they seemed intent to stop and speak with each one that passed by the manor.

The minstrel had intended to walk through the front doors with their comparative lack of scrutiny, as if he had some busine ss in the registrar’s office while the family was away. (And he did, really - he wanted to see what sort of records the city had kept about all the people disappearing from it.) But from the security present, something or someone was inside. Something that the nobility did not want to share. That or someone had made an assassination attempt, but he hadn’t made one or heard tell of someone else trying the same… 

It seemed most likely that something was being coveted like a dragon’s nest of treasure. Which, r eally, made him  _ itch  _ to get inside; he so loathed when people thought they could keep him out of things with crude force and large locks and heavy doors. 

A lesson from when he was a fledgling flitted through his mind; the cold dry air of late winter, his  brother’s mouth near his ear so the words wouldn’t carry beyond them. 

_ “If you need to get into some place, figure out what the guards are looking for. Then remove it.” _

A hand on his shoulder, and the pair of them watching a pair of guards overseeing a granary. 

They’d watched people come and go for hours, learned when the shift changes were. Learned the guard routes. They’d watched farmers; allowed in, but tracked with s uspicion. And they’d watched a lord; who passed without the indignity of either guard’s heavy gaze, who came and went freely.

They’d come back the next day disguised as that lord and a valet; they had left with enough grain to feed every family in their bl ock for a month. It had barely dented the stores. 

The minstrel had been smaller then, less certain. Now he was older than his brother had been, and wasn’t that strange. He licked his lips and leaned forward. It was a simple lesson. It was the same here or there. The lord disguise had problems - commoners looked at you - but it had also been necessary to avoid scrutiny from the people who might actually stop them. 

Here, the lesson still applied - and here he had more options. 

_ If they’re stopping outsiders _ _ … they’re not paying mind to locals. They are primed to look at one and not the other. Remove the differences.  _

He fingered a strand of his hair. Blond was common enough, but Weiss’s people were quite a bit paler than he was. Most were also taller (this an noyed him). Certainly all were less prone to wearing blue. He did not have the control that he needed just then to disguise himself as a proper Hylian with less suspicious clothing, so he would need to get to the ground and find regents for a spell. Blood , an image, and privacy to work without interruptions. 

If he got to the ground here, he would likely be stopped. He was watching the guards seek out the people that looked like him, speak to them, in some cases follow them. They always let them go - but h e did not think they would let him go, not with the emblem of the Zora on his tabard. If they searched him it could also be hard to explain all the weapons he carried… it seemed an unnecessary hassle overall.

He took a step back from the edge of the roof a nd looked around for a route over the town wall. A section that led through the winding estates to the north of town was crumbled, but there was no easy way to reach it from the poor neighborhoods. 

A different option was going south, if he lost his cloak  and arrayed his clothing into something less cared-for. Perhaps a transformation was in order, if he could find those regents for control. It would drain at his magic, but it might also keep him alive.

Not that he’d seen the guards kill anyone. But - he wa s there to investigate bodies. He couldn’t get into the records to see what the nobility had written, and… had watching guards seek out and question people of a specific appearance ever really end well for the people questioned?

The minstrel looked at the  sun still high over head and then back down at the buildings below him. Ahead were wooden structures, fairly new, with shingles in good repair and cheerfully painted trim. When he twisted southward and looked to the far end of his perch he saw houses sagg ing in on themselves, patched roofs, and boarded windows.

Amazing what a difference one street could make. 

The guards he saw were mostly congregating on the pretty, shiny side of the divide. The minstrel turned and crept toward the southward eave.

#

The  poor district had less guards by far, and so long as his cloak covered his tabard they seemed content ignoring him and staying at their posts. The walking guards did not check alleys that they passed by, and seemed almost hurried in their rounds. 

The mins trel had found that the problem with starting his hunt for a viable face on a poor street was that: he needed someone who wouldn’t be arrested on sight in a better district. But someone that could also be lured into an alley, and generally well-put togethe r people didn’t follow strange men into alleys – only the desperate and the stupid did that.

… Well. That wasn’t fair, entirely. One could always follow a well-put together person into _their_ _t_erritory, but generally to do so one was not only giving up their advantage of field but also walking into a trap. The minstrel had never met an ill-dressed trafficker. 

For the same reason, it would probably be difficult for him to get someone to pursue him into an alley. The poor knew better. The rich and highborn…  well, how many of those were going to be wandering about here?

He tugged his cloak closer and leaned against a wall, scanning the street. Predators were a viable option, he supposed. He didn’t  _ like  _ giving up his advantages, but he was pretty sure he could pick one who would bite off more than they could chew. 

He tipped his head back in time to spot a man jogging across the street – that… was that one of the carpenters who’d worked on fast-houses in Kakariko, before the seven year war?

Another jogged by, wearing an eye-searingly bright vest (it was a shade of pink the minstrel would be happy to never see again). And- Yes. Those were almost certainly the men who’d worked in Kakariko when he’d stayed there as a ‘troubled youth’ (he’d have to thank his br other for that phrasing when he saw him next, perhaps with a sound kick to the ass).

Those carpenters worked in Kakariko for  _ months,  _ long enough that tan skin and red eyes shouldn’t be off-putting anymore. They might even remember him, though he doubted i t; he’d rarely strayed into the open in daylight.

That thought in mind, he took off at an easy lope after the fourth of the group. “Excuse me, sir,” He called, forcing his voice into a pleasant warm sound at odds with the coldness in his core, “Could we ta lk for a moment?”

The man slowed down, though he remained jogging in place as the others carried on without looking back. “Yes?… Oh! Yer far from home.” The carpenter gave him a friendly smile, and the minstrel very nearly grinned back at him. 

He had to bite the inside of his mouth.  _ Don’t give up the game yet… _

The carpenter gave him a jaunty salute. “What can I help ya with?”

“I’m so glad to see a trusted face!” The minstrel clasped both hands over his heart and bounced on his toes. “I’ve been s taying in a house here, and the doorframe is in danger of collapsing. I’m willing to pay, of course…”

The man nodded and bowed with a flourish. “I would be thrilled to assist ya! Please, lead the way.”

The minstrel beamed at him, showing off sharp teeth and warping the scar on his lips. The carpenter smiled back at him kindly. “Thank you so much!” The minstrel ducked his head and turned, taking off at a fast walk. It wouldn’t do to be remembered for ru nning with someone on his heels now. Bad enough he’d done it before, really -  _ now’s not the time to think of that. You got caught once, but this guy isn’t exactly a Gerudo Guard. He’s just… kind of an idiot, actually.  _

A well-meaning idiot. But still an id iot. Who followed an acquaintance into an alley?…  _ well, if it weren’t for him doing that, you would be in a much harder position… _

He picked out the alley he’d been lurking in before and showed the carpenter to the very back of it.

“Hmm? Is this the door,  or izzit another?” The man asked – and the minstrel couldn’t blame him, because the building itself looked rather- dire. “I think ya might have a bigger problem than the frame…”

Well. “Do you think it will stay up?” The minstrel let anxiety color his tone . It wasn’t an act, exactly. He stepped into the overhang shadow and started to check the alley for eavesdroppers.

The carpenter looked back at him and looked rather puzzled. “Er. Say, what exactly are ya doin’?”

“Checking for unwanted ears.” The minstrel  said, then paused. “Er. That sounds pretty bad, doesn’t it. My apologies. I… didn’t want to talk to you about the building, actually.”

The carpenter looked reasonably concerned with this development. The minstrel supposed he could always knock the man out  if it came to it, but he’d really rather not, if it could be helped. “I was hoping I could get your help in another matter,” The minstrel said, “It’s legal, if unorthodox.” He watched the man's mouth twitch. “And I still intend to pay you for it.”

The carp enter’s expression lightened. The minstrel made sure he wasn’t blocking the alley mouth, and that seemed to ease the man’s nerves entirely. 

“I can at least hear ya out,” The carpenter said, trying for his usual smile and managing something a few shades pa ler than happiness. He was still unsettled, and the minstrel’s request was unlikely to ease his feelings at all.

“I need blood,” The minstrel said, “Preferably about half a litre, though I could make due with less.”

The carpenter startled and gave him a wi de-eyed look. “What on earth d’ye need all that for?!”

That was a fair question. “Magic.” The minstrel said. “I could work the spell with less, but it would have a far shorter duration.” At least, a far shorter convincing duration. He could stretch it out  if people were only seeing him from a distance…

The carpenter eyed him dubiously. The minstrel blinked, and added, “You see, I’m a mage.”

That did not relax the man. “Ya mean a witch?”

“Functionally there isn’t much difference.” The minstrel admitted, “But mage sounds less scary, doesn’t it?”

The carpenter eyed him a little longer. The minstrel watched his lips twitched - almost against his will, the carpenter barked out a laugh. “So it does. Well, alright - so ya want to buy a half litre of blood offa me f or some spell. And then what?”

The minstrel blinked. “Well, I give you some coin and make sure you can walk someplace where you can get a drink and a meal.” He didn’t want the man to pass out! Some people were very sensitive to even a little loss of blood. Something to do with hearts and systemic pressure. 

The carpenter appeared to warm to him, which was - odd. “Yer a good kid, ya are. I thought so when you were a boy.”

“We never met.” The minstrel said, and the carpenter laughed again - long and from the  belly, probably startling some passerby outside their alcove.

“Ah, yer right o’course, we never did.” But he said it in a way that seemed to be meant to humor the minstrel, rather than a genuine admission of a mistake. “And what’s this magic yer workin, th en?”

The minstrel considered lying. But it wouldn’t hold up long if they made their deal. “I’m too noticeable. I need to change my face, and I can’t do that without the appropriate regents.”

The carpenter nodded. “And you won’t do anything bad with it?”

Th e minstrel’s lips twitched. “Never. My loyalty has always been to this country.” He said, “For all that it may look strange on the face.”

The carpenter nodded - he did it with complete surety, to the minstrel’s bewilderment. He had not spoken more than ten words to this man before today, yet he seemed almost ready to agree to a back-alley deal. It was… suspicious, and the minstrel discretely sniffed the air.

No, there was no one lingering nearby to leap on them whenever he should draw a blade. And no, the m an was as he appeared to be - a cheerful, middle-aged Hylian carpenter. Alive. Genuine, for all he could tell. How… strange.

“Did you have any other concerns?” The minstrel asked, tipping his head back. He wanted the carpenter’s complete sincerity for the  arrangement - the spell would be more potent if he had it, strange as he felt trying to coax it out. 

The carpenter considered him a long time. The minstrel tried not to fidget. He listened to the noise of the street behind them, strange and removed from t heir sheltered place of rotten planks and crumbling stone. The midday sun filtered down through laundry lines and tacked on supports for the buildings until it became the half-light of a forest floor, lending their meeting a clandestine feeling that was… a ltogether appropriate, homey for the minstrel but perhaps unsettling for his guest. He thought about what he would do if the carpenter made an about face. What he  _ could  _ do without blood. Possession, face-theft, blood-theft. 

None of them were savory. The l ast was a damning sin. He would- rather not.

The carpenter inclined his head, held up a finger. “One question.” He said, voice turned grave. “Blood fer magic - I thought that was somethin’ evil? Somethin’ dark.”

_ They aren’t the same.  _ But the minstrel could see where the misconception came from, even  as it tried to lay a cut on his heart. “All magic is blood magic.” He said, “Whether it is evil or good…” He took a breath, remembered who he was talking to. Dropped his ‘guide’ speech for the tired, quiet voice of a young man from Kakariko. “It’s a questi on of how you get the blood.”

The carpenter’s back straightened a little, and his expression turned from grim to solemn - like he was accepting a heavy burden, the minstrel thought. Well, refusing a mage was a heavy burden by most reckonings - he probaly t hought the minstrel would be upset (he was, but he was swallowing it) and might try to change his mind with force (he wouldn’t. Even if he could do that, it would ruin the magic before he’d cast it). He thought over his backup plans again, considered how t o make his exit before there could be a fuss.

The carpenter put out his left wrist. “Here okay? I need the other to work.”

The minstrel stalled. “I’m sorry?”

The hylian tipped his head down to look at him. Squinted a little. Broke into a smile. “The left w rist. Will it do?”

The minstrel stared back at him. His eyes flickered to the wrist, which had a good thick vein near the skin and strong tendons just behind it. He couldn’t cut too deep, or he would hurt the man. He needed to be careful. Hylians - blood - magic - they were all very fragile.

He removed and set down his bag to open it. From inside he took a white-stone bowl, to set on a sagging crate. Next he examined the carpenter’s wrist - sweat and dust coated the skin in a fine layer. “It will do, but hi gher on the arm would be better.” There was a vein close to the surface in the hollow of the elbow that bled well, but wasn’t too sensitive for most people. The minstrel’s eyes flickered up from his work to the carpenter. “Is that alright?” He set out a ro ll of gauze and linen bandages.

The carpenter thought a moment and nodded. 

Relieved, the minstrel dug through his pack to find a cloth and a small clear bottle of cold, almost offensively strong alcohol for wetting it. The smell was sharp and verged on pa inful for the minstrel, who kept it only for cleaning. He scrubbed the dirt from the hollow of the carpenter’s arm, looking carefully for where to make his cut. The man looked curious, but did not complain or fidget.  _ Good. _

“Sit down.” The minstrel requeste d. When the carpenter obeyed, he crouched beside him and drew a clean knife from its place on his hip. He laid the blade against the carpenter’s skin, parallel to a vein. “It’s going to sting. Some people don’t like to see it.” He warned, “I’ve seen one pa ss out. Will you be alright?”

“Only one way to find out.” The carpenter smiled in a way that he thought was probably meant to look brave, though it was shaky on the edges. 

_ It should be,  _ the minstrel considered,  _ you are letting a stranger open you in a dark alley. I do not think I could trust like you. _

He pushed down a margin. The blade was very sharp - when he drew the knife down the skin split open and blood emerged as if from a wellspring. The minstrel set asid e his blade and grabbed his bowl, holding it under the carpenter’s arm and using his other hand to raise and turn the man’s wrist so the blood could drizzle down into the bowl freely. The thin white stone seemed to glow from within, though the minstrel tho ught it was only a trick of ambient light. The blood pooling in its bottom tinted the bowl pinkish white. 

When it was half full, he turned the carpenter’s arm back so the cut faced skyward, and he grabbed and rolled the gauze to press against the cut. The wound wasn’t more than a centimeter, but he had no doubt that it stung, and it had bled rather freely. He wished for a moment he had a better hand at healing spells - he would have closed it, if he could. 

He had the carpenter hold the gauze in place, and used the bandages to wrap the wound in silence. The alley was full of the scent of blood and magic - the minstrel shut his eyes and breathed deeply, until his heart slowed back down.  _ Freely given. Freely given.  _

“How are you feeling?” He asked his donor,  who flexed the fingers of his left hand and examined the wound with a contemplative air. 

“Not bad at all,” He said, “A little light-headed. And that’s enough?”

“It is plenty.” The minstrel said, “I thank you for the privilege. What do I owe you?”

He watch ed the carpenter hesitate -  _ what’s the market value for a half litre of blood in a back alley? Good question,  _ the minstrel thought, but didn’t say - and waited patiently. “A… gold rupee?” The carpenter asked, at last. The minstrel inclined his head. 

“Don e.” It was a bigger part of his funds than he’d like. But the carpenter could ask more and he’d be honor-bound to provide it. Happy to, even, for a given definition of happy. ( _ Grateful? Can creatures like me truly feel gratitude?  _ He could hear a voice from the past telling him he couldn’t. He decided for the sake of spite that he could, and did, and was.)

The minstrel took it from his wallet and watched the man’s eyes pop nearly out of his head. 

“And - ah- lunch?” The carpenter tried, voice edging on disbe lief. The minstrel smiled in spite of himself.

“I think I promised that.” He said, though it wasn’t quite true. He stood up to pack away his things, except for the bowl. “May I have a moment to work my spell?”

“Oh! Well, I suppose… will it hurt me?”

The mi nstrel’s lips twitched. “It won’t harm you. But you may find it disconcerting.” He picked up the bowl to examine, and inhaled the smell of blood. “You’ve heard tell of people who can wear faces not their own, as you would don a mask?”

The carpenter nodded, slow, still wide-eyed. The minstrel smiled at him as if he were an obliging audience. “Today you will see such a feat, though I am forbid from telling you how I perform it.” He raised the bowl to his mouth and let his eyes fall half-lidded; focused on the scent below his nose, the threads of magic weaving around them - the country’s, the city’s, the power in purchased blood. The power of his own blood. 

The words that fell from his mouth were not of Hylian - they were old, forbidden sounds, born of the des ert and the badlands and the harsh places where people did not like to walk. A Gerudo might have understood some of them. To a Hylian, he thought their truth might be clearer - that their ears, which heard the gods, might be able to pick out the unearthly  echo of the sounds, the noise of other voices rising up from the earth to join his.  _ “Earth split me, Abbadon, and remake me whole. Lend me the face of another - lend me your wings to hide behind.”  _ The words he spoke were ones of power, ones that tied back  ages and rooted underneath the earth where the dead lay and rest, awaiting their return to the world.  _ “Let me go unseen among my enemies. If I act outside your bounds - bind me. If I sin under your blessing - let my soul be released.” _

He shut his eyes and  drank down most of the bowl.

It tasted like copper and earth. He cleared the blood from his lips with a swipe of his tongue, and opened his eyes to a thin film of blood left in the stone. He swiped his fingers through it: he dragged them over his forehead to paint an eye, with a tear  that ran down the bridge of his nose. “Become a Hylian man,” He murmured. The bonds of the magic cinched tight around him, like a web whose strings had been tugged to tautness. It released in a rush, strong enough that his ears stung - he heard the carpent er gasp - and for a brief moment the alley was lit as if the sun had rose inside it. 

(It was not, as things happened, the most subtle spell. But it did its work admirably.)

When he opened his eyes again he was a little taller, wider and rounder. His body  felt heavy, though it was only a clever illusion. He raised his hand to examine its skin - pale, sun-freckled - and grinned. “How is it?” He asked, in a voice considerably rougher than his own. 

The carpenter startled. “It worked pretty well!” He marveled. “We could be cousins, the way ya look!”

The minstrel smiled again, this time with unfeigned pleasure. “Thank you. Shall we find you a tavern with hot stew, then?”

The carpenter nodded and got up. The minstrel trailed after him, intending to catch him if h e fainted. But he stayed steady on his feet unaided, and they left the alley without anyone nearby seeming to notice anything amiss.

#

Once they had found an acceptable bar and he’d passed over the funds for a meal and a cup of hot cider, the minstrel wen t on his way in the guise of another carpenter. The carpenters were nomadic, but they were around long enough that one generally became inured to them… which he was banking on. If things went well the guards wouldn’t look at him twice. 

If things went badl y, well. He couldn’t say he didn’t try. And as long as he got out alive, he knew that that avenue was closed and he had to try another!

(If he got out. If. He would just have to, then, wouldn’t he.) 

He needed to be in and out quickly, though - probably ab out three hours if he didn’t want to risk the guise to start slipping and looking  _ off.  _ All he needed was someone noticing a Hylian with glowing red eyes and starting a panic about demonic possession. No doubt with his luck he’d end up caught and locked awa y in the Laketower, and then where would he be?

Well. In an asylum, and with Ruto out a lap-hound. He would deal with it if it came to it. (He hoped it wouldn’t come to it.)

The minstrel headed back into town, flexing his fingers and trying to decide how  he felt about the limitations and strengths of his borrowed form. The carpenters weren’t very fast, but they were surprisingly agile for a middle-aged men. The minstrel thought he could probably scramble up and over a roof as was if it came down to it, tho ugh he’d rather not find out for sure.

He forced himself to relax when the first patrol of guards came into view. They barely glanced at him, focusing on something past his shoulder. People didn’t clear out of his way the way he was used to - he had to nud ge and jostle to get through some crowds. He refrained from doing so if they had swords, though, and instead skittered around such people - he didn’t want to find out how his borrowed form handled puncture wounds. 

The manorhouse towered above his head, sh ading its own steps. The statues in front of it were odd. There was a statue of the Three, which wasn’t atypical. It was marked with an image of the Triforce. But there were also flanking statues, and it was those which struck him as unusual. One was an im age of a poe - or, he thought it muts have been a poe - though he could not recall if he had ever seen one with such strange and elongated limbs before - clutching a scythe from the far end of which hung a lantern, which housed an extinguished candle stump . The other statue was of a creature neither crow nor human - it was strangely familiar. The image of it seemed to press on the edges of his mind - there was something here important, something he was forgetting. He wanted to come back to this statue and e xamine it, he thought, with his proper eyes. Perhaps then he could recall why the rain-stained idol was of any importance to him. 

He made his way past the statues - unable to shake the sense that they were turning to watch him, yet unwilling to turn and r eassure himself in so public a place - and tried to stride into the building. The guards that flanked the doors - adorned in black, armed with spears - dropped their arms to bar his way. 

“Business?” One asked him, a woman with a badly cut cheek and a notc h out of one ear. When she curled her mouth he could see teeth and gums, like the greeting of an unfriendly dog. 

“I need a permit notarized,” The minstrel said, widening his eyes. “If that’s alright, ma’am.”

“It ain’t.” Her lips sealed and thinned to a na rrow line. “Office is closed for the week.”

“But - it’s an emergency? I can’t work without it…”

The guard raised her chin. “Not my problem. Get lost.”

He was pretty sure the guards of Castletown at least spoke like they’d taken an etiquette course. Maybe W eiss was a little more open-minded, but… he doubted it. 

The other guard glowered at him. He backed up when he saw the spears twitch, like they were going to be swung around and pointed at him if he lingered. “Understood,” The minstrel said, reconsidering  his options. Could a carpenter climb a building less conspicuously than a musician? Maybe he’d find out. “Have a pleasant day.”

He headed down the steps, past the statues (he looked this time. They didn’t follow him. But the feeling of eyes… didn’t go away ) and into the crowd of the street. 

The people seemed to press in heavier than before - he headed away from the building and from where he’d stashed his things. The manorhouse had guarded entrances, including an open air walk with a few guards in black ta bards patrolling it. That walk was lined with columns, and placed on a raised platform to the garden around it. 

The minstrel was curious to note that there weren’t guards outside of the promenade, or even above it. He sniffed the air - no dogs that he cou ld smell, nor noise of them. He waited for the guards to turn in their paths. When they did, he vaulted the fence and crept to the edge of the pediment. He made his way along it in a crouch, figuring time was of the essence if he didn’t want someone to loo k over and see him through the iron work. He rounded the building and listened to the  _ clip clip clank  _ noise of the men walking just above and beside his head. His heart thudded slow and heavy in his chest. 

_ You’ve been through worse,  _ he thought, and  _ it’s only a game, and if you lose, it becomes someone else’s problem.  _

It wasn’t true. But it kept him under control.

The courtyard facing away from the mainstreet had a few windows open to let in the late autumn sun. He watched the curtains of one flutter in the breeze. Something cold lanced through his chest - before he could look down and see if he had been physically  assaulted, a woman appeared in the window. She spread the curtains apart on their rod -  _ the fluttering curtains drawn out by the wind -  _ and opened the shudders -  _ the shudders are wide already -  _ and leaned herself on the sill, smiling at the sunlight. She c aught his eye and smiled, held up a finger for silence, and looked back inside. She faded away, the red of her eyes lingering last. 

_ Afterimage,  _ the minstrel told himself, and crept forward to the sill she’d occupied a moment ago. The air there was chill d espite the sunlight. He settled in at the base and heard the click of a door inside. 

The minstrel could hear the soft noise of leather boots. The voice that followed the opening of the door was… peevish. “-n’t understand why my cousin can’t handle it.” It said. It sounded male and young, though he couldn’t be sure of either without a look in. “Whatever do you keep him for, if not for these sorts of problems?”

There was a creak, then the noise of shuffling and something  _ clicking  _ against the wood floor, like an injured man with a cane. “If he handled it, he would be thorough.” The voice sounded like it belonged to someone with rheumy eyes and bad joints. “It would take time and rupees. And-” He stopped speaking abruptly. When he spoke again his words were cle arer and nearer, though the minstrel had not heard him move. “Why is that window open?”

The peevish voice grumbled, “I need the air. I’m suffocating.”

The old-man voice scoffed at him. “You’re a fool to keep it so. Anyone could get in.”

“Anyone- it’s a met er and some off the ground! Who is going to come stealing inside from your courtyard?”

"I don’t know,  _ Captain.”  _ The old man’s voice went sharp and wry, “Why don’t we think about that.  _ Who has ever come through by the window? _ Who in Weiss?”

The silence afte r he spoke seemed venomous, somehow. The minstrel considered moving on, but the image of the woman he’d seen in the window kept him arrested. Perhaps, he reasoned with himself, he could slip in when these two were gone. He would surely know when they left; they were not trying to be quiet. 

“I’ll shut it.” The petty voice grumbled at length. He came closer to the window - the minstrel pressed himself as tight against the wall as he could while the foot steps grew nearer. 

_Creak… creak… creak…_ _thump._

He felt as much as heard the murmur of the the curtains as they were pulled back inside. The man caught the shutters above his head - the minstrel didn’t dare turn his head up. 

_ Don’t look down. Don’t look down. Absolutely don’t look down.  _

The man in the window  sighed. “Well. The sunlight was nice while I had it.” He muttered, and pulled the shutters shut with a  _ thump.  _

The minstrel’s heart pounded. He could barely hear the man’s retreat over the noise. 

_ Quiet… be quiet. You’re not helping anything.  _ He tried to l isten at the window longer. But the shutters were rather thorough, and he could hear no more than a murmur from inside of the building anymore. He gave up the scene for lost and crept away to see if any other windows had been left open.

While he was workin g on that - and on going unseen by guards - he considered what he had learned. Someone of importance  _ was  _ still in the Manor, and meeting with someone of rank - though the minstrel did not know who beyond that they were a captain. 

He did not find any other unshuttered windows. He did  _ try  _ a few, but they were stuck fast and presumably latched on the inside.

Annoying, and his time was coming to a close. With care to avoiding the guards, he departed the property and headed back into the crush of the midday cro wd, intending to find another alley.

#

The next alley he found was on the border between rich and poor areas, and reflected it rather… oddly. One building was solid but slovenly. The other was ornate to a degree that was tacky, but creaked alarmingly at th e first hint of wind. The minstrel had no desire to linger between them long; he released the spell, adjusted his appearance as well as he could in the reflection of a puddle on the ground, and shouldered his pack before striding out of the alley. He looke d back once, to get a parting shot of the strange pair of buildings that had sheltered him - one abandoned and the other trashy - and noticed that the street around him was a little more muted than he was used to. People were coming and going, but they wer e avoiding the space around… him. Perhaps he’d botched the spell release and his eyes were lit with ambient magic? He hadn’t noticed it, but it was very hard to check such things in pools of filthy water.

He took to walking near the buildings and tugged up his hood, deciding to get out of the area and regroup at his camp.

He managed to get halfway down the block before that plan was shot - he felt eyes on the back of his neck. He kept the same pace, and eventually the  _ clip clip clip  _ of someone forced to hur ry to catch up to him carried over the sound of the crowd. But whoever was behind him did not confront him. Rather, it was someone on the side his hair and cloak blocked - a person that appeared from the crossroad. 

“Ah. Have I found another vagabond?” The hairs on the back of the minstrel’s neck went up. The sense of eyes on him grew worse, burning and itching. Even if he hadn’t heard the words, he would have been damned into turning to look for the source of the feeling. 

A Hylian stood in the middle of t he road intersecting his, left in peace by other commuters as if he carried leprosy. He was of typical, if wealthy, stock for the region - pale skin, freckled, braided blond hair - though of an unusual reddish tint. He had his head cocked, and he was watch ing the minstrel like he was a good to be assessed. His lips were unscarred and pursed in contemplation- his eyes were cold. They were familiar to the minstrel, for all he’d never met the man whose face they resided in. They reminded him of the way lords l ooked at beggars, or the way his older brother looked at contracts. 

The mouth curled up, smiling soft in a pale fine-boned face. The eyes stayed the same.

_ I am looking into a mask of a gentleman, and underneath is a beast. _

“You are out in a bad area.” The Hylian observed, “There is a curfew, you know.”

“It’s… day time.” The minstrel responded, puzzled. 

The Hylian’s eyes flickered up at the sky, then back at the minstrel. His mouth twitched like he’d heard something funny. “Unless the daylight is striking the street, you should be indoors. So.” He raised his chin. The street was clearing around them, thou gh the minstrel was not sure if that was because of the curfew or because of the man talking about it. “Are you a vagabond?”

Somehow the minstrel did not think ‘I have a tent outside of the city’ would go over well if he should admit to it. He said, “For t he moment. I will leave.” Instead.

The Hylian smiled, eyes crinkling at the corners. His lips didn’t… curve up enough, really, to make the smile look right, not with his eyes narrowed so much. 

_ You’re missing the trick,  _ The minstrel thought,  _ You have to th _ _ ink of something really happy to pull that off. You can’t just make the motions and hope they match. _

“I think I will escort you.” The Hylian said, “After all, you do not know the area.”

The minstrel’s gaze flickered to the men left on the street, all wearing black tabards and chain mail, all carrying swords and spears. He smiled a little, thinking of how convenient it was that someone of rank would deliver themselves to him so neatly. 

“I f it is no trouble to you?” He inclined his head. “Then I would be dearly obliged, Sir.”

The Hylian smiled back at him. The minstrel counted his teeth, and wondered at how such blunt instruments could inflict so much blood and suffering.

He took the man’s  arm - as if he was a youth in need of escorting - and they walked out of the street together. The guards watched them but didn’t speak. 

The Hylian that had his arm smelled like bath salts. Underneath that - perfume, which surprised the minstrel. Perfume w as unpopular in the capital; its association with the desert damned it. But maybe in a swamp, people had shorter memories… if only to cover the odour of stagnant water.

The Hylian's voice was honeyed. “However did you find yourself in our beloved city, wan derer?” 

The minstrel’s grip on his arm tightened. He felt the man’s sleeve, memorized the feeling of embossed velvet; a ridiculous adornment for a man walking the streets and not the halls of a queen. 

“I heard a rumor,” The minstrel murmured, forcing him self to speak delicately, like he was reciting poetry, “That the city Bremen was a wonderful place, one full of inspiration. I thought, if it is so full of good words and good thoughts and good deeds - that perhaps even a lowly wandering minstrel mind find a bit of genius to secret away for himself, here.” He paused and flashed the Hylian a smile, hating that it emphasized his scar, hoping that his audience saw it as an emblem of weakness and not of survival. 

The Hylian seemed gratified by this answer. “Ho w lovely. And to where am I escorting you? Perhaps the White Horse?”

The minstrel didn’t let his expression twitch. “No, I am afraid that lovely establishment was quite full.”

“The Black Bull, then.”

“No, no.” The minstrel glanced at the man, whose face wa s fixed to polite curiosity. 

“Come now, do not make me guess every inn in town.” The Hylian slanted him a friendly look after saying so, watching him through narrow eyes. “Tell me where you are staying.”

The minstrel did not let his gaze flicker down to t he sword hanging by the hip of his escort. But he pictured it in his mind, imagined it unsheathed. His heart thudded slow and heavy behind his ribs like it was asking to be let out. 

“The name escapes me,” He said, “The district outside the walls.”

His esc ort’s smile twitched, and his eyes got a little narrower. “What? South of the city?”

“That’s the place.” That wasn’t the place at all. 

The minstrel let his escort bring him to the Southern exit of the city, which was replete with brothels. He didn’t want  to be there, exactly, but if there was a place he thought he could get away unmolested it was the one most full of carnal distraction. 

His escort’s eye wandered easily from brothel to brothel, assessing the men and woman sitting behind latticed screens an d reaching to potential customers with soft voices and secretive smiles. “Around here, then?”

“Somewhere about.” The minstrel agreed.

“And you’ll see me inside, I hope.” The guard hummed, something like satisfaction in his voice. The minstrel felt a rock f orm in his stomach. 

“I am afraid I do not accept liaisons with my betters, Sir.” The Hylian’s mouth went tight and his eyes widened. The Minstrel tacked on, “A thousand pardons.”

The man watched him, a look on his face somewhere between  _ angry  _ and hungry a nd oh, it was up to the minstrel to placate him how lovely how quaint how  _ fucking predictable.  _

_ Disgusting bastard thinking you have leave to  _ ** _ touch  _ ** _ me I have killed men thrice your worth for  _ ** _ less _ ** the minstrel took his feelings and swallowed them.

_ Survival is the most important thing, little one.  _ His brother’s voice murmured.  _ If people give you a weapon to use against them, don’t hesitate to sink it into their backs. _

The minstrel flashed a pretty practiced smile up at the man, as if he were the one  in the wrong, as if he was really sorry to escape the bastard. “It would be a poor return on your kindness,” He said, shaping his mouth around kindness as if it were genuine and not a euphemism for  _ your poor technique of predation,  _ “To sully your reputation  so, letting people see us go somewhere alone. I could never do that and live with myself.”

The Hylian’s eyes narrowed like he was puzzling through something. 

_ Learn to take a no, you stupid creature _ . The minstrel kept up his pleasant, vaguely pleading expr ession. He even widened his eyes in a bid to look pleading, like he was some love-struck waif. 

The Hylian’s shoulders lost their tension - the merchant saw, at the bottom of his vision, the man’s hand move away from his scabbard. “I suppose you are correc t,” The man murmured, “Though I wish it were not so. Perhaps another time and place we might remedy it.”

_ I would sooner marry a dragon than spend a single night in your company _ , the minstrel thought with almost feverish conviction. He smiled kindly, said n o more on the matter, and slipped away in the sweat-scented crowd. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I keep shuffling around scenes trying for the best pace. So even though I have about 15 chapters worth of content written, I have to edit and piece together each month's chapter from that stash of content. I don't recommend this method, but there you go.


	4. Messenger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's been almost a year, and Link is trying to live in the Lost Woods with the Kokiri. Operative word being trying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posting this an eensy bit early because I can't actually schedule posts. Aaaaah well.  
I can't keep going back and rewriting everything I find wanting. So I've decided to try - as much as I can - to only go back and edit what really bothers me, or what a trusted voice recommends.  
That being said. Racism and various forms of xenophobia are present in this story. I'm a white woman so everything I'm writing is from secondhand experience (IE research and conversations with non-white friends about their experiences) or from attempts to translate harassment for being female-presenting. I've been conditioned to think of racism as rare but big events. I know intellectually that it's smaller things that comprise the day to day bullshit, but nonetheless I find myself thinking of assaults, slurs and stalking. I am doing my best to get more of those little things. I am certain I have failed in it; all I can do is listen when people who have lived it tell me where I can improve and where I've failed.  
So if something sticks out to you and you have the energy, please let me know, and I'll do my best to fix it. Thank you for coming on this messy journey with me; I hope I can return your interest with at least a little entertainment.

If someone asked him what he remembered later, years later, about the day they’d emerged victorious… Well. Link might lie. Say it felt great and liberating, and he’d been so excited to go home. Then excuse himself to find something to destroy because Link had only matured a little from the day of Ganondorf’s demise. Most of his lessons were in self-restraint. 

Eleven months later, and he still heard the dreaded question. (There were less than fifty people around, yet he kept hearing it.) Kokiri who made the mistake of asking more than once tended to find themselves on tall tree stumps, where they were left to think about their choices. Their fairies titter at him, but they can’t argue with results – the questions stop after perhaps five repetitions. (Two with separate Kokiri. The other three were of course Mido, who would never be one to heed hints.) 

Perhaps worst of all was Link’s reaction to questions about Navi. 

(Saria had learned to field those; Link’s limited self-control was not made to handle them.) 

Like many days since his return, Link was dozing near the Forest Temple. He didn’t really need to sleep - found roughly four hours a night sufficed fine- but there was only so much to do waiting on Saria. So he daydreamed with his back in the grass and his eyes shut. The clearing smelled like growth and earth and home; it took him back to when the woods were unquestionably the safest place in the world, and he slept in the roots of trees through the hottest parts of summer. 

The day passed quicker that way, and he could think of things he didn’t have and people he couldn’t see. (Did it make him bitter? Well, perhaps.) 

The howl of a wolfos broke the spell on him. He opened his eyes to moonrise and an empty clearing. Overhead were snatches of deep indigo sky and the fading remnants of a sunset. He always thought about climbing atop the forest temple to watch one day. The view must have been fantastic from there, where he could see over the trees to the marshy horizon. 

Below the canopy darkness and heavy fog lingered. It left him thinking of Kakariko’s Temple, but all around him here were the welcoming scents of summer growth and clean air. He sat up and reached for his blade, keeping an eye out for monsters and thinking of places far away from him. 

The Shadow Temple was a stagnant tomb; stifling, chained to the past, built with crumbling stone and soaked in old blood. Link was grateful for the days he didn’t dream about it. Bongo Bongo was… almost an afterthought in the face of everything else. In the face of the voices inside. 

_ Here lies _ _ Hyrule’s _ _ history of hatred and greed. _

Still, all the memories of that place weren’t horrible. Navi had been with him, and Sheik had appeared to watch over him when he’d needed to rest. 

(He remembered too well his shock at the appearance of Sheik, not a day after the invisible well-demon broke free and _threw Sheik like a rag-doll _in a bid to strike Link. The guilt still crawled down his back like spiders.) 

His eyes scanned the tree line, trying to pick out shapes in the dark-and-quiet. 

_ ( _ _ “You’re injured! You can’t just-” _

_“I’m _**_fine._**_”_ _Sheik had given him a withering look. “_**_You_** _look ready to keel over, and I would thank you not to tell _**_me_**_ what I can and cannot do.”__)_   
It was difficult to talk down a Sheikah whose mind was set on something. Or- a princess. Though Zelda had never bristled, imperious as an offended barn cat, at the suggestion that he might tell her her business. He wondered about that. Maybe it was part of pretending to be someone else.) 

Feet scuffled on moss, announcing he was no longer alone. Link pushed off the ground, and saw Saria’s eyes glitter from the shadowed alcove of the temple arch. Link walked towards her, his chest twinging as he watched her fairy flitter around her. _ Fussing, probably, _though he couldn’t quite hear. 

They met in the middle. “How was the forest?” Saria asked, as if he’d been up to anything while she was absent. 

Link shrugged and kept his hand loose – a moment later Saria’s tiny, fragile fingers caught his and threaded between them. When Link did nothing but start toward the path home, Saria huffed. “Those Poe sisters made nuisances of themselves… again… I had to do four puzzles just to reach the sanctum!” 

That did not exactly surprise Link. The Poe Sisters made sure to pull something similar at least once a moon-cycle. Sometimes they outdid themselves, and Saria would call him in to distract them so she could actually get some work done. 

What did Sages do? Probably monitored for monsters or Ganon’s grudge returning on the land as a blight, or something. 

“They _ are _ dead. There’s probably not much else to do.” Link murmured, ducking a branch he knew by memory. At such a late hour he was nearly blind, reliant on Saria’s guidance, but he _ knew _this branch. The scratches it inflicted on his face a week prior were still healing. 

Saria’s fairy veered to the side; they started on a different path than the morning. Saria’s grumbles were barely audible over the cicada chatter of late summer. “Well… yes… but they don’t have to be such terrors about it!” 

They were Poes. Link wasn’t sure people became Poes if they understood how to solve things without making themselves terrors. If Mido weren’t a Kokiri, he would probably be a Poe. Luckily he was immortal. And material – you couldn’t keep a Poe out with a fence, not like you could Mido. 

“What are you laughing about?” Saria asked. Link coughed and resolved not to tell her. 

Instead he squeezed her palm and smiled wider when she squeezed back. He was bigger than her now, but she was older, and still thought of herself as the adult between them. 

“You’re not going to lose me.” Link assured her. Saria’s hand stiffened in his. 

Her voice came out measured. “I don’t know that. The Woods take Hylians, Link. Just like you.” 

She’d been nervous since he’d scratched his face. She’d never worried so much when he scraped his knees as a child. But maybe these things were different for adults. 

His smile turned rueful; he recalled Grog, already so bony. And then the stalfos without armor that haunted where Link had left him. 

“They have to know me by now.” He assured Saria. 

Saria made a noise of dissent. There were lights ahead of them, meaningless things – if he looked to any side there would be lights, because they were approaching the Kokiri village. Cricket songs and frogs croaking nearly drowned out Saria’s voice, a testament to their nearness. It was nigh deafening, disorienting, without Saria’s music to focus and guide him. The Kokiri Woods and the Shadow Temple - the only places his ears heard _too much_. 

Link swore he could hear a note of her song from the left, and purely from habit he tried to step in that direction. 

Saria’s grip on his hand went viselike. She pulled him straight ahead. Link watched the forest shadows warp and shiver as they stepped out of the Woods and into the village clearing. 

“Link?” 

He was still watching the woods. A year ago that tune meant safety. Perhaps he’d imagined it? 

“Link…” 

Why did he hear them at all, when Saria was with him? She couldn’t be playing. Was he still half-dreaming? A tug on his arm distracted him- Saria was still clinging to his fingers. She looked pale and worried, but he could excuse the paleness by moonlight. 

The worry… well. That was on him. “I’m fine.” Link flashed her a smile, “Sorry. I was thinking about a night like this in Kakariko. The moon had been orange then – it was pretty, like a peach.” 

The air had been crisp, and colder than the forest. It was also drier, with a cloudless sky. Navi had been fascinated by the streams of moonlight, and had flitted between them with childlike delight. Sheik was with them for the evening. He’d waxed poetic - mostly incomprehensibly - then taught Link chords to play for the fun of it. It had been a good night. 

Link didn’t think he could go anywhere outside of the forest without being reminded of friends he’d lost, one way or another. 

Saria’s expression eased by a margin. She let go of his fingers when they were away from the forest and had to clamber down the ladder to the village proper. “Oh? Was it just the moon that made you remember?” 

Climbing the ladder was awkward for Link – the rungs were sized for Kokiri, not grown Hylians, and sometimes it was easier to just sit on the ledge and drop down. So he did. He twitched an ear toward Saria. “The dark made me think of the Shadow Temple. But the forest is… too alive.” He shrugged. “It was cold and dusty inside the Shadow Temple.” 

He could see more of the stars in the Kokiri Village. He looked up at them - they flashed like torchlights. 

“That doesn’t sound like a nice place to remember.” Saria held the curtain of her house aside – Link gave another lingering look to the sky before he ducked in. 

The simplest version of a complicated truth was, “It’s not.” 

Saria’s fairy buzzed past them and raced along the walls – will-o-wisps appeared in her wake, and filled the room with steady pale-yellow light. 

“But I liked Kakariko. It had good things.” He sat down on the floor and leaned against the table, stretching one leg out and resting his arm over the other. 

Saria made a point of taking off her boots, and she eyed Link’s without speaking. Link shrugged at her. Saria rolled her eyes, and went to fetch them water. 

Link blinked after her and raised his head. “Hey, don’t add – ew…” 

Saria ignored him. She kept adding mint to the water. “It’s good for you.” 

She came back and set the mug in front of him. Link grimaced at the contents. Saria settled across from him in a dainty way, and started to drink the foul concoction she’d made for herself. 

“What was good in Kakariko?” Saria asked him. “You stopped telling me about things after we came back, and I’m kind of fuzzy on the details after so long.” The smile she gave him was half-apologetic. 

Link gave her a moment to try and remember anyway. He watched her flounder through the bad things first, without ever saying them – the furrow of her brow and the distressed glitter of her eyes spoke volumes. Saria chewed her lip, making pinholes in the skin that bled a little and sealed immediately. _ Fairy-blood, fairy magic. _“Kakariko had… Impa’s house… and, ah, that family you helped?” 

At Link’s nod, she brightened a little and continued, “Oh! And… um… Dante? The grave keeper!” 

“Dampe.” Link cracked a smile. He did miss Dampe. If he ever left the woods again, he’d have to go back to the Graveyard and pay the old ghost a visit. Race him again and tell him how much his hookshot had helped, how much it still helped Link each day. Their meeting and races felt like no more than strange dreams. 

“I think that’s all you’ve told me, about Kakariko.” Saria shifted, “Am I forgetting something?” 

Link pursed his lips. “Well. Anju. She was always really nice – and her cuccos, too.” 

Saria jumped, eyes brightening and lips turning up. “The lady who bred the tiny ones! Right?” She bounced again and clapped when he nodded. “It was so cute! I wanted one… but I don’t know how to care for a cucco…” 

“They’re smart. Self-sufficient.” Link considered it, “Kind of mean. I think they’d eat Mido.” 

“Oh.” Saria thought about that. “I guess I can’t have one, then.” 

“Probably for the best.” Link leaned back and made a point of ignoring the leaf-water. “There was, um, other good things. A soldier who bought a mask off me, he was really nice.” He slanted Saria a smile. “And there was a house I stayed at before I’d gotten the Goron’s Ruby. The person staying there was – I thought he was an adult then, but now I think he must have been younger?” He mimed out someone halfway between them in height. “He was smaller than I am now.” Ignoring that they were sitting, of course. 

Saria nodded as if she’d understood, and she probably had. It was nice to have a friend who could catch his thoughts as well as she did. “What happened?” 

Link flashed her a tight smile. “Well. I was in the Graveyard, and he asked if I had anywhere to go.” 

Saria’s eyes widened, but she no longer looked happy. Link was never happy that she was unhappy, but he recognized this look as particularly bad. It was the one Saria got before marching off to _scold someone. _“Wait. Was he a _creepy_ adult?” 

Link shook his head, but it did little to convince her. 

"You’d better tell me the whole story now.” Saria decided with a frown. “So I can be sure, and feel better about it. You’ll do that, won’t you?” 

His throat felt a bit uncomfortable from so much talking already. He picked up the mug of foul-water for an unwelcome but necessary drink. “I… well. I guess, for you…” 

Saria’s ears pricked; she leaned forward to display how intent she was on his story. 

Link winced and took another gulp to fortify himself for his mission. At least the mint was soothing, and served some purpose besides the obscure ‘health benefits’ Saria liked insisting on. 

“Well…” 

* * *

Seven- no, nearly eight years ago in Kakariko, Link had just escaped the tomb of the royal family with his life and a song. Like anyone sensible he was sitting on the ground, trying to catch his breath and wind his last bandage around the aching cut on his leg. Without any sort of warning (well… maybe some kind of warning, but he’d hardly been looking to the sky while he licked his wounds) a fat drop of water splattered the earth beside him. Then another on his face. And leg, and hand, and – the clouds opened up with a boom of thunder, loosing the rain that had threatened Kakariko all day. 

The forest never had rain like Kakariko – the canopy softened most of the downpour, and the roots sucked up puddles before they could form unless it was raining fit to flood. And he had somewhere to hide from it there, with Saria always home to sit with if the afternoon was too dreary to be alone. 

It was months since Link had gone outside the woods, and he’d been running from place to place with no idea when he could return. That night he found himself sitting against a tombstone in the muddy graveyard of Kakariko, mostly-bandaged, mostly whole, and watching mud and rainwater swirl together in uneven eddies. The forest seemed very far away; for a moment familiarity seemed infinitely desirable to the giant, distant world he’d walked into. 

He’d left to obey the dying request of the Great Deku tree. And he thought - maybe outside he could find somewhere new. Somewhere that it wasn’t strange to not have a fairy, maybe, or to not be one. He’d met many people since leaving the forest, but few had felt like home to him. In Kakariko he was more alone than he’d ever been, but he was - hopeful. He had Navi. The princess had given him a task, just like the Great Deku Tree. Link could help someone. That was worth some cold nights, wasn’t it? 

Navi buzzed around him– _ look out! Link! – _and he looked up to someone in front of him. Their hand was what he could focus on first, held open in front of him like they expected to be greeted. Brown skin, calloused fingers – a bandaged wrist? 

Link leaned back for a better look. It was a young man with a soft face, framed by dark cloth. He was scrawny like the alley cats that creeped around Hylian towns, and wore little - a close fitting shirt that went up his neck and down to his wrists, with something white tied around his hips over blue tights. More bandages were scattered over his body, though not enough; scrapes and cuts littered the little skin left exposed. 

His lips were pursed. His eyes were red, and the rain-matted down his hair and hood so they clung to his cheeks and made him look half-drowned. “Hey.” He said, a little impatiently. Maybe he’d been there a while. 

Link wondered if he’d been trying to visit the grave Link had chosen for his seat - he’d seen people doing that a few times, but he didn’t understand the point of it and asking someone who looked so somber seemed… wrong. 

Link got up to move, but the man just turned to keep watching him. Maybe he wasn’t there for the grave, then. 

“Are you lost?” The man asked, waving his hands. Link wondered if red eyes were simply a trait one found outside the woods. They made his company look a little like a monster. 

Link’s hand crept for the Kokiri sword from habit. 

The man’s eyes widened. He let out a bark of laughter. “Surely you are!” He stepped to the side of Link’s blade, and loosed something close to the cackle of a fairy made angry. “A muddy waif raises his blade to me. You must be addled in the head.” 

_ Watch out _ _ ! _

Magic seeped off the man in little curling tendrils. 

Link threw himself to his feet. His leg complained. In his ears was a buzzing that meant danger and battle and monsters- he lashed out on instinct. 

_ Clang! _ His blade met a dagger with a wide cross-guard. Link looked at it; it was embossed with the weeping eye of the Sheikah. 

“Ah-ah.” The man murmured. In his gaze there was something that Link had only seen in the faces of enemies, vicious and wanting. “You _ are _ a brave one, aren’t you?” His voice color ed with darkness and not-quite loathing. “ _ Eldritch thing _.” 

Link narrowed his eyes and pushed into their deadlock, testing the strength of the man. He does not, to his regret, find it wanting – his opponent holds him off with a smile twisting his lips in petty glee. 

“In a contest of strength, there’s no way a child can beat an adult.” He murmured to Link. Link braced himself for a retaliatory blow, on the sizeable chance he could not dodge it. 

They parted. The blow didn’t come. “Who are you to strike me?” The boy cocked his head. 

Link moved to break their impasse - at the same moment the maybe-Sheikah, maybe-monster rocked back on his heels and stepped aside the swing of Link’s blade like it was no more than a friendly slap. The man let out another ringing laugh at odds with all that came before it. “You are not from Kakariko or Castletown.” His eyes glittered. 

Link took two steps back. He could sleep in the field, he thought, and looked for a way out of the Graveyard that would not take him too close to the stranger when the man sheathed his dagger. 

“You will freeze in this weather.” The man said, as if he himself had moved beyond petty things like the cold. Or mortality. 

Link eyed him askance. He wanted to ask, but the words wouldn’t come. 

“If you need somewhere to sleep,” The man said, “I have room enough for another person in my home.” He paused, peering down at Link. “Provided that you agree not to visit unjust harm on myself, or my things. I do not have much. And no means to replace what is broken.” 

Link didn’t answer; he needed time to untangle what had been offered to him, and hunt down any strings attached. The rain had already soaked them, and Link felt its chill down to his bones. He did not trust the hand held out to him. 

The sun was falling past the mountains, and on its heel drug the night to cover Hyrule. The rain, a heavy patter, strengthened into a downpour while they stood together. 

Link’s clothes were clinging, soaked, and seemed colder with every burst of wind. His stomach growled; he did not think he would be offered hospitality twice. If it was only _ unjust _injury forbidden, then. Surely that meant he could strike back if his host lashed out? (If Link could survive him lashing out. It had been raining when he approached, but still, Link had not heard him at all.) 

The boy canted his head, waiting for Link to decide whether he’d rather risk death by the cold or death by a stranger. 

Then he seemed to sense Link’s decision, or perhaps just tired of waiting. He turned his back to Link, unguarded and unarmored. 

Link watched him take three steps. 

Without a look back, the man called, “Hurry up. I’m hungry from training… if you want, you can help cook.” 

In the face of such a promise, the ache in Link’s stomach seemed even more pronounced. Link forced himself to plod after. 

They passed one of the guards Link knew guarded the entrance to Death Mountain - the man looked at him and smiled. 

_ Do I call out to you? _ Link wondered, and then, _ Adults are no good at stopping anything. _

He was on his own. It did not bother him at all, though some more information would have been nice. 

The house was a small, normal building for Kakariko; thatch and mud bricks on a wood frame. It was settled at the end of an alley, tucked under shade trees and easy to miss. The windows were shuttered and a complicated lock barred entry - the maybe-Sheikah called it many colorful things in his efforts to unlatch it. Link reconsidered whether he was looking at an adult. Adults usually didn't curse in front of children… right? 

Inside was a one-room place that’d been divided by curtains and rough-carved wood screens. A fire pit took up the middle of the room. There was a stove in the corner, a basin under the back window, and a counter that was apparently stocked with dried vegetables inside. A low table sat over a broad rug, which lent the place most of its color. 

Link’s host toed off his shoes, then looked back at Link - still wearing boots and standing just inside looking around. The man- boy?- grimaced and complained about the water making his floor muddy. Link wondered if that meant he was being kicked out when a spare tunic was thrust at him. It was too big but smelled clean, and was made of dyed dark-blue wool. 

Once Link was changed his host lit the fire for the night. He made Link hang his clothes near it but, “Not too close, you’re going to burn us both to death, and then I’ll be cross.” 

(How he could be cross when they were dead was not explained. Perhaps he was a troublesome enough person to become a Poe, and presumed the same of Link. Link did not know what would become of him if he died. He said nothing.) 

Then he complained that Link was still dripping _ blood _, and made Link sit at the table where Link’s wounds could be seen to “properly”. They worked in silence. 

Link’s stomach punctuated his movements with noisy grumbles – he was embarrassed by it, but it was the one thing out of his control that his host didn’t see fit to complain about. Link didn’t look up to see if it was disgust or pity that kept the Sheikah silent. He wasn’t really interested in learning. 

“What were you doing in the graveyard?” The stranger asked (he hadn’t given a name, and Link cannot summon his voice to request one), leaning over the edge of the table to watch Link clean his wounds. Link barely looked up, and only to shrug at him. 

The man was not dissuaded. “If the locals catch you running around like this, soaking wet and bleeding and hungry, they’ll think you fey.” 

Link looked up longer this time. The stranger laughed in his face, folding brown fingers in front of his mouth. Link didn’t miss that holding himself so concealed the man’s expression. 

“Oh, I am not a local at all.” His host assured him. Link did not believe it. 

“I am just studying here a little while. I…” The Sheikah’s voice caught, and his eyes darted away. “I live elsewhere.” Saying so left him stormy looking, like someone sorting through foul memories. 

“You are an orphan?” The Sheikah asked Link. 

It was not a word Link knew – he shrugged; the Sheikah frowned at him and waved one hand as if that would help explain anything. “You know. Someone without living parents… or ones that are able to take care of you.” His eyes flickered again. It was- bitterness, Link thought, probably. “Or it can mean that you are unclaimed.” 

Link still didn’t answer him. He’d been told he was a Hylian, but he wasn’t unclaimed or uncared for – the Great Deku Tree had taken him in. Now the Great Deku Tree was gone, but Saria and Navi remained. 

Link said nothing and focused on what he held. The bandages felt almost-soft after handling a blade for so long, but against his wounds the material was rough. He focused on it as closely as he could; it blotted out other thoughts. 

The Sheikah watched Link work a while more in silence; when Link ignored him he closed off his expression, and his hands fell to the tabletop. Boredom etched itself in the line of his mouth. “Well. That’s fine.” 

Link’s host rose and walked over to the basin for washing up. “If you are unwanted then the wild things take you, isn’t that so?” Saying so he nodded, content to answer himself where Link did not. “It’s just as well!” With clean hands he got out vegetables to rinse and chop. “If you were to tell me that you were wanted…” 

Link’s ears twitched. He knew better than to react to barbs thrown. 

The man sniffed, “Or claimed, I would be terribly angry.” 

What a strange person he’d followed home. (Saria did not look happy at all at this point in the tale. In fact, she looked entirely convinced Link had indeed spent the night with ‘a creepy adult’.) 

The strange Sheikah walked to the fire, fetching the boiling kettle to pour out into cups. He was still talking, maybe for his own benefit more than Link’s. “I would shout and curse and throw you out.” Maybe some people talked to themselves because they were afraid of losing their voices, the way Link’s seemed to quail and hide. 

“But I have the room for one unwanted boy to sleep, I think, and food for him to eat. No one else.” The Sheikah looked down at the cups, saying no more and only stirring them. 

Link finished bandaging his wounds and wondered about a way to repay the kindness he was being offered, for all his host’s strange complaints. Perhaps he’d catch some bugs for him to eat? Would a Sheikah accept those? (The idea that he was sitting there and listening to someone who was used to going unheard, and that that might have been enough, did not even occur to him.) 

Two mugs of heavy-scented water were set on the tabletop. Link wrinkled his nose in disgust at the odor. It smelled like a _ stronger _ version of mint-tea, and that was one comfort of home he would happily forgo _ . _

His host sat down on the colorful rug across from him. “What? You don’t like mugroot?” He took a draught of his own as if it were perfectly acceptable, if not _ pleasant _, and watched Link with expectation. 

Link eyed his cup again and took it with a grimace - his host laughed. 

“I suppose it’s because you are only a child.” The Sheikah shook his head and held the cup near his chest. “Well. It’ll warm your hands, anyway.” And he looked away from Link, relaxing like a cat who’d finally decided it was secure in its surroundings. 

Link shrugged and tied off his bandages, then picked up his cup to cradle. It… _ was _nice to hold, he supposed. 

“I’ll make curry. Tomorrow- well. Tomorrow and you’re welcome to the pantry.” His host jerked his chin towards the homemade screens and curtains that partitioned off the kitchen. “I’ll be up and out before you, guaranteed.” 

Link spent a moment to consider that. Sure, he slept in for a Kokiri – but they woke with the plants, an hour before dawn. Surely his host didn’t rise near as early. He hummed just to respond, and continued doubting in private. 

The Sheikah began heaping things in a pan, set it atop a rack over the firepit, and settled in to cook it. The smell made Link’s mouth water. 

The house had little in terms of seasoning, but the Sheikah rationed out portions of colorful power from little bottles so their dinner would have a taste beyond what hunger could grant. He offered Link flat bread to have with their meal, which was thick dark gravy with bits of meat and rough-chopped vegetables. The taste was strange; spicy and a little sweet, like peppers. Link shut his eyes to inhale the smell. 

It was different. But good. By the meal’s end he was dozing sitting up. 

His host rolled over on the rug until his back was near-flush with the wall. Nearby was a blue cloak that he pulled up to cover himself. Seemed he intended to sleep there, with his back to the cold mudbrick wall. “You can have the bed roll.” The man said, waving one hand towards the curtained off bit of room in the north-east corner. He watched Link, his eye narrowed to a thin slit in his face. “G’night, kid.” After that, he burrowed down in the covers like a wolfos confronting the dawn. “Don’t stab me while I sleep.” 

As promised, he was gone before Link woke up in the morning. Even Navi couldn’t tell Link when he’d left. 

* * *

Saria eyed Link askance, and Link did not think he’d convinced her at all that this was a good memory or a safe situation. 

She said, “He sounds weird.” 

Link thought she was probably restraining herself for his sake. “He was.” He shrugged. “But he helped me without getting anything for it, I don’t think. Not a lot of people could be bothered…” He shifted which leg he leaned on and which he stretched out. “Hylians don’t seem to care about each other, not like Kokiri do.” His lips twitched, “… well, no. Kakariko was sort of like here. Down to how strangers got treated.” 

Saria winced. “Link…” 

“Well. They do. They’re wary.” He huffed and added, “I guess it’s natural. After seven years of monsters wrecking things and a civil war before that… who wouldn’t be?” 

Saria reached across the table to grab his hand. She said, “You’re safe here. I promise.” 

Link heard a wolfos howl from somewhere outside of the village, and the scream of an owl. The fairylights didn’t waver, but for a moment it felt as if the room grew darker. 

“I should go home and rest.” Link released her fingers and pushed himself to his feet, catching Saria’s eye a moment with the intent to reassure her. “Forest knows you’ll have me up before dawn.” 

Saria smiled back at him, but her furrowed brow kept her from looking like she meant it. “It’s the best time to get things done! The air is still cool, there’s dew on the plants, and the wolfos have just gone to sleep!” 

“What about _ my _sleep, Saria?” Link put his hands on his hips. “Maybe I’d like to get more of it?” 

Her eyes rolled. “I think you get plenty. But if you really prefer, I’ll ask Mido to walk with me to the Temple-” 

“Ah, no way.” Link held up a hand. “I get it, I’ll be ready to fall out of bed when you arrive. Sleep well.” He would never, ever forgive himself if either of them came to harm. 

“Pleasant dreams.” Saria cocked her head and smiled a little brighter, that time. “Goodnight, Link.” 

* * *

Link’s bed was unmade and cold when he dropped on it. The dark inside his house seemed much deeper than night in the forest. The air felt damp, so he bundled up under the blanket before focusing on slowing down his breathing. His ears were pricked for any sound out of place; he heard the noise of the forest, fairy-chatter, the buzzing of insects. It was a year for cicadas. 

Hours or minutes dragged by. He struggled to stay sleeping or awake and ended up trapped in an unpleasant purgatory between them. The covers became stifling - he half recalled kicking them off his bed. 

The air shuddered and pulsed with heat. The ground shook - Death Mountain in a tremor? He wasn’t sure where he was anymore. He smelled sulfur, and his eyes snapped open to search the room. 

Shadows flowed over his walls and ran streaked with red, lighting up strips in hellfire. Eyes seemed to peer out of the dark places. The whisper of many murmuring voices, and the brushing of wings, filled the room and set his skin crawling. 

A shadow of something like a Hylian, darker than the rest of the phantoms, stood across from his bed with arms outstretched. It towered near to the ceiling, faceless and yet looking straight at him. Arms became wings that fanned out to their full span, filling the room and trapping in the little light left in bars made of feathers. _Pain_ bloomed in his chest and he couldn’t look then, but he was sure claws had just sunken into the skin between his ribs to pin him down. 

The shadow reached forward. Claws emerged from a swirling pit of darkness on the wall and kept stretching til spanned the room, hovering over him; Link struggled against the anchors keeping him still. Sharp keratin brushed his face. 

A voice filled the room, echoing and myriad, like a thousand souls whispering together. “_ Link! _” It sounded like thunder and rainfall, home mixed with nightmares- 

Link fell out of bed scrabbling for his sword. Sunlight filled his room, and he could see the reflected green of plants on his windowsill. Saria was standing in the doorway with her brows knitted and her eyes wide. 

Link grabbed his sword and whipped his head to look for intruders, searching the walls, the ceiling… all covered in sunlight, or the pale blue shadows of noontime. Except across from the window - there was one strange shadow that had appeared, wobbling and warping… Link turned to the window for a second look. A crow sat on the sill, preening its feathers and paying little mind to them. Link let out a sigh and let his shoulders relax. 

Nothing like what he’d seen. His eyes wandered back to the wall and focused on the point where a clawed hand had reached out; he watched it to assure himself that nothing would appear. His heart thudded in his ears. 

He heard the soft pad of Saria entering the room. Link spent a brief moment grateful about it - he was sure she’d been waiting until he was awake enough to recognize her before she came in striking range. Saria was far older than him, and capable of caring for herself, but he worried. His nightmares left him terrified _ he _might hurt her where temples, monsters, and the phantom of Ganondorf had failed. 

It was several minutes before she came in, slow and telegraphing her movements to keep from startling him, and crouched at his side. Her hand reached out and hovered over his shoulder, wanting to touch and not daring. “Bad dream?” 

He didn’t remember falling asleep. He turned his gaze back to the wall. Just a crow’s shadow was out of place, and the creature that made it was settled on the edge of his bed and peering at him with the liquid black eyes of a common animal. There was no man spanning from floor to ceiling, and no red lights. 

Again Saria offered him her hand. Link pulled his knees to his chest and hid his face against them without taking it. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to MissMonie for betaing and helping me improve on the flashback and Link's general thought processes. My natural inclination is toward the melodramatic tone of the Minstrel's chapters, but Link is a little calmer. Or a lot calmer. Honestly he's pretty laissez-faire about the idea of someone trying to kill him at all. To the concern of everyone around him.  
Also special thanks to MapleNinja and CottonCandyHaze, who looked over my author's note for the beginning of the chapter.


	5. Fledgling Hope

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Minstrel has some issues moving around Weiss. Luckily, there's a friendly knight to offer him assistance.   
(Yeah. He doesn't trust such a convenient thing out of the blue, either.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A shorter chapter! I'm posting this from the hotel room at a con... The laptop has been unhelpful, so it'll be a little after midnight when this goes up!
> 
> Content warnings: Er, mostly the Minstrel being terribly, terribly cynical. And verbose, and dramatic... he IS a performer.  
(And I have terribly, terribly melodramatic writing. Oh well.)   
There is a plot-relevant OC POV scene in this chapter, by the way. 
> 
> Beta-read by MissMonie despite her working retail in the holidays. She is a freaking hero, seriously... thank you again dear!  
Thanks also to the readers, and I hope you enjoy this chapter!

For a city in the swampier end of nowhere, Bremen had an awful lot of guards. Annoyingly so, for the present moment, troublingly so if he thought of the future. It was a county, sure, but one rimmed in by the Lost Woods, the Ocean and the  Lanayru Mountains – so why the personal army? He couldn’t imagine a bunch of farmers and drunk bumpkins could cause THAT much trouble for the Duke. This was more the sort of set up he’d expect to find somewhere… well, expecting saboteurs, really. Most of who he’d seen were guards or mercenaries rather than proper knights – all of the on e s cha sing him could be lumped into the prior categories rather than th e latter, to his relief. It wasn’t that knights were more thorough at searching and finding – it was that their armor and weapons made it  much harder to fend them off, and more likely that he’d have to kill them to escape.

It had been a day since his jaunt in a stolen face, and he hadn’t found much more. It was rather frustrati ng.

The reserve of soldiers  w as sensi ble rather than paranoid given his presence, but over a week here and he didn’t understand  _ why  _ they were here, and it left his fingers twitching and his teeth gritted. For fuck’s sake he was hiding in the filthiest alley he’d yet found ! Castletown and  its disgusting sewers had nothing on the hell hole he’d stumbled into – it smelled like death! Like the Shadow Temple! If a  deadhand didn’t appear out of the muck to try and consume him by nightfall he’d eat his hat. Figurative hat. Cloak? Something.

His plan to borrow the face of the builder had fallen through : h e’d gotten up into the high district fine, but patrols had tailed him. And when he passed near the gates to the house they’d begun to converge, forcing him to abandon the attempt and try losing himself in a crowd. So far his pursuers had been remarkably persistent.

The spell holding his appearance in place would be gone in the next two minutes. He just had to hold tight through the dispelling and th e recovery. And ideally, slip off as a lithe young minstrel while they were looking for a middle aged and corpulent carpenter.

In retrospect, they might have been less dogged in their pursuit if he hadn’t taken his flight over rooftops and finished with a wall mount and a vault that would leave the diving game Zora in cheers. That was admittedly suspect in most  Hylian towns. He  tried  to remember that, but it was  difficult .

Another patrol of guards passed the mouth of the alley, signaled by shadows on the wall high above him , and the soft clink of armor down the way. Sunset painted the alley deep black and orange, stripes of light and shadow torn from the half-boarded wall and lines of drying clothes strung  above him .

He’d never seen a poor district with such dedicated patrols. It would have fascinated him, if he weren’t there as an undisguised enemy. What was worse was that he couldn’t get to his bag until he got out of the stinking filthy alley – he’d fallen off a wall, and been in the process of retrieving it from where it had landed when the first group of slum-side guards had spotted him, and now they were combing over the whole neighborhood. The whole thing had been depressingly amateur, and he was trying not to think about it and instead looking for a way to get out of the mess. It wasn’t like entering the inner city was even illegal. It was just that they made note of anyone who didn’t look local or noble and kept tabs. But even with his acrobatics display pursuing him out toward the slums seemed like overkill.

Which was why he’d climbed the wall. Which was why a guard decided he was committing a burglary or something equally petty and attacked him.

The mud under his boots gurgled and popped. He hauled himself onto the top of a dumpster and made a visual search for chalky, turgid hands i n the clogged gutter.

He was almost certain he saw one in the shadows below a box where  animals might seek shelter when the regular footfalls of guards halted. His ears twitched, and he pressed low to the top of the dumpster. He lay still and half-crumpled to blend with the waste around him and listened, body thrumming with the need to freeze and the need to flee  _ roaring  _ from his core to the tips of his fingers.

“Sir!”

“Good evening.” A shuffle. Salutes? The minstrel wasn’t sure. The new voice sounded too friendly to be in authority, despite the deference of the guards. Perhaps just a senior, or a messenger of high birth. “Disregard the search. If he’s running around this end, he’s either made it to a bolt hole, or the locals will handle him themselves.”

The guards didn’t respond as far as the minstrel heard, but they left and he didn’t hear another patrol approach. Instead of feeling lucky, he felt the unease of prey looking into a trap.

He stayed very still. A shadow appeared in the alley entrance and sh runk as the source grew closer to his hiding spot, closer…

A man with hair colored an unflattering shade of brown, and tailored clothes, came to stand behind the dumpster. He stood scant inches from the minstrel’s shelter. The light of the alley-mouth illu minated him, painting him like a terrible fey spirit. The man turned his head from side to side with a sort of calm assurance that left the interloper’s breath caught in his throat.

His company seemed Hylian, and their eyes were ill-suited to dark places. Standing in glaring light, the man should never see into the pitch shadow of the alleyway. And yet- the interloper was afraid of him. So he did not move, and prayed that his heart -  thudding like a rabbit running from a fox - was not audible to the sharp ear of his company. 

The nobleman shifted in the alley and lifted something from his side to examine – the interloper quickly identified it as his own bag, filled with his weapons and food and his unsullied garments.

“For future reference,” The  Hylian was still glancing around, no doubt searching out  movement, “ Burglars usually try to take someone else’s property, not leave theirs.”

Caught out. The interloper’s face burned with embarrassment.  _ Amateur _ . He didn’t move, but he had to breathe sometime soon, and the man seemed perfectly comfortable blocking the exit for a good long time to trap him. What was a noble doing in this end of town? First the swarm of guards and now this embarrassment? Bremen was climbing on the list of his least favorite places, alongside  Kakariko’s Well and Castletown’s dungeon.

His chest caught and his vision swam. He needed air. The alley was wobbling.

The nobleman was playing with the edge of his tunic slee ve, apparently oblivious except that his ears kept twitching. The interloper’s need to breathe finally superseded the urgency for silence. (Bodies were as they were.) He took a breath.  _ Tried  _ to be quiet.

The man looked up and straight at him, expression br ightening. The interloper flinched.

“Oh, good!” The noble said, too cheerful by far. “I was beginning to worry you’d gotten off somehow and I was talking to an empty alley.  _ Such  _ a relief. Come down and tell me what you thought you were doing, won’t you?”

The man tilted his head to the side, flashed the minstrel a smile that was in parts too confident and too charming to be anything but calculated. 

The interloper considered attacking, he really did. But the man hadn’t really  done anything to warrant that. (Not yet, give him time,  _ they all slip up eventually _ .) 

The interloper stretched out his legs and eased  himself over the dumpster, touching the wet ground as silently as he could manage. The water made a disgusting sucking sound that water  _ shouldn’t make _ .

The man watched him with an easy, open expression that belied the sword slung over his back and the curved daggers hung from his belt. A knight, then, and one very comfortable at confronting unknown men in an alley. The interloper had the troubling suspicion that an ambush waited outside for them.

The noble held out his bag. The interloper moved to take it, his face burning, glad for the shadows that kept him out of sight. He had to reach into the light to fetch his things, though - he saw the nobleman ’s eyes catch on the exposed skin of his fingers in the brief moment they were revealed. 

His bag in his possession, the interloper pressed back into shadows until his elbows brushed the dumpster. He watched the man, waited for him to draw a blade, waited  for the other shoe to drop. He prayed to ears he didn’t think were listening that the weight and heft to his bag was his weapons and not pounds of brick dust.

The nobleman’s eyes slid up him, assessing. His expression went lax and his voice blunt. “If you  stole those it was from a temple. And not any sort around here.”

The interloper bore his teeth. “… they aren’t stolen,” He said, holding the bag closer. “They are earned.” By blood and pain, mostly.

The nobleman nodded as if he found this answer well and sensible. From  that, the interloper suspected he might’ve suffered a few blows to his head. (Or maybe he was new and cocky and an easy kill.) 

“That’s fine.” The nobleman didn’t  _ speak  _ like he was new or young. He talked like he was used to people listening \- trusted that his voice would be heard, commands obeyed. “If you had admitted to stealing them, I would want to know what house they came from and how  _ they _ came to have them…” The knight gestured with one gloved hand, lips pursed, still half-smiling, “An d why and how you knew about it, of course.”

“They really are mine.” The interloper knew that his words meant little, but he offered them anyway. “And I would love to tell you the whole story, Sir, but I am afraid I am running against a deadline.” He pause d, shifting his weight. They both looked down at the  _ squelch  _ his boots made. The interloper grimaced, and the nobleman pursed his lips like he was recognizing a slight error in some unseen plan. The interloper hissed out a breath. “… and I think I might be standing in viscera.”

Disgusting.

The nobleman’s eyes flickered back up from their boots. His pursed mouth smoothed into an easy smile. “I believe you.” He looked positively serene. It made the interloper feel ill. “It makes my life less complicated.”

The interloper decided to reassess him. He was probably entirely mad, but someone had given him a sword anyway. Maybe it was glued into the scabbard but having it kept him happy. 

“And,” The nobleman took a half step back. “On the ground between us, I had  forgotten-” He let out a little laugh. The interloper felt a chill race up his back. “That would be what’s left of a deadhand, my apologies.” The nobleman pointed out the stains the interloper had been trying hard to write off as thick smudges of tar. 

The minstrel’s reaction was, looking back on that moment, probably a little dramatic. He’d hissed and leapt straight forward onto the almost- cleaner, definitely -drier cobbles… right into the sunlight and plain view.

But. But a  _ deadhand _ _ .  _ A slimy, disgusting, rapidly-decaying  deadhand . That was enough justification for most levels of fear and loathing and disgust, wasn’t it? He raised a hand to conceal his face, belated,  eyes narrowed in a wince.

The nobleman seemed surprised to see him, so suddenly. But not smug or unhappy. Just- surprised. He turned his face away. “I hadn’t thought of it in the excitement. Had to rush off without cleaning, my father would be ashamed.” He rubbed the back of his head and said, again, “Sorry about that.”

The interloper conside red bolting, but the man was still between him and the end of the alley.  _ Up  _ was an option, but it was flashy choices like that which had gotten him trapped in an alley in the first place… 

“I don’t normally come out this way,” The nobleman’s tone was just  a little off as he said it. The interloper suspected it was a lie, maybe the first he’d directly told. 

“So why did you?” He slung his bag onto his back. The nobleman’s eyes flickered to him, then he turned further away and pretended he hadn’t been looking . The interloper felt a twinge of irritation, dropped the appearance of a scared musician in over his head. “Stop pretending you haven’t seen me, coward. Face me or don’t.” What did a lie matter if everyone knew it to be untrue?

_ You aren’t slick.  _

The nobleman twitched, turned his face slowly to peer at the interloper. He’d dropped the smile for a neutral face. He looked the interloper over slowly. His eyes lingered with significance on his hips. On the weapons strapped there, not all hidden. The interloper scowled at him and pulled his tabard to cover them better. 

The nobleman inclined his head, slowly. Turned back to face him, and put a hand on his hip. (It reminded the interloper impossibly, stupidly, of the Hero. The resemblan ce made him want to scream.)

“There were reports of people being attacked. It was going after rough-sleepers.” 

That sounded depressingly likely, from what he knew of deadheads. And the poor part of town wasn’t cobbled all over - some places were plain pac ked earth.

“What are you doing that corpses spring out of the ground here?” The interloper demanded. 

The nobleman looked down. “Weiss is built on bodies.” He said, and something like apology passed over his face. “Sometimes they come back up.”

That sent i ce down the interloper’s spine.  _ What is wrong with these people? _

“That’s… certainly… something.” The interloper said, because he couldn’t start screaming his thoughts out loud. 

The nobleman’s smile twisted and- yes. He was definitely trying for apology th at way, though the interloper wasn’t sure that he bought it. “You’re from the north? I understand it can be a little jarring. I think my mother took some time to adjust herself.”

The interloper squinted at him. The nobleman shrugged. 

“She was from northwe st. Had to adjust to a lot of things, I expect. But I grew up here.” He offered the interloper his arm. “I can show you to the nearest inn, if that’s where you’re headed.

The interloper cleared his throat. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather part here .”

The nobleman didn’t lose his friendly air. “I don’t doubt it. But you know they’re still looking for you.”

The interloper didn’t wince. But the stiffness of his shoulders betrayed him - the nobleman’s eyes flickered over them and his smile regained its  apologetic cast.

“It feels a little like blackmail,” The nobleman mused, “But you’re really safer with an escort than not. So I have to insist. Sorry, really I am.”

The interloper took a breath, pressed his tongue against his teeth. 

_ What is one princeling _ _ under a knife? Nothing but another cooling body. _

The chattering at the back of his mind got louder. He did not know how much of it was himself. 

_ It will not be the last time a man thinks he owns you by holding your secrets. Play along. _

His fingers twitche d. 

_ And when the opportunity rises you can d e a l w i t h h i m  _

He licked his dry lips. “Sure. I appreciate it.”

He didn’t take the man’s arm, and the man dropped it when his offer went unheeded. So that was- something.

The interloper suspected the allowance was little more than an attempt to keep him off balance, as if there were any way for him to be calm in the situation. (As a saboteur  he admired the dedication to technique. The rest of him, the saner parts concerned with survival, bemoaned the timing.) 

The nobleman cocked his head. “So… Why then and there? A wall in the inner city, mid-morning?” 

… that was a… very specific question. It was possible he’d seen the whole commotion and chase… How humiliating. He tried to take solace, that the man w ould be dead soon. But he couldn’t quite manage that sort of blind confidence. 

His luck had always been  shit but Weiss seemed intent on dragging him low even by that unglamorous standard. 

The interloper drew his collar  up, teeth flashing in a grimace it didn’t reach high enough to conceal. “I didn’t think anyone would look.” 

The nobleman put his hand back on his hip, tipped his head. “Well, you can thank the late Duke for being wrong!” He used his free hand to gesture, apparently indicating an energetic woman… or maybe an attacking  cucco …? “She had an awful habit of using the rooftops to get in and out of the city. Didn’t like to wait for clearance at the gates.” The knight’s lips twitched  with something like amusement. Well, a noble using the roofs as roads probably made for platinum grade gossip in high society. The interloper would certainly enjoy watching some of the courtiers of Castletown try it.

The last Duke of Weiss had died almost two decades ago… the nobleman did not look old enough to remember her himself, or at least not well. At best he’d surely only been a squire then. Caution bled into the interloper’s voice. “You served her?” He shifted his weight, pressing most of it onto his back foot.

The man didn’t acknowledge how he was moving. “As a soldier.” He said. It didn’t sound like a lie, but he just- didn’t look ol d enough to have fought. Maybe if he’d been a Sheikah, but… 

“I might carry weapons, but I rarely fight anymore.” The nobleman continued, unaware of the interloper’s puzzling. “They’re just for show.” He smiled at the interloper; all guileless and amiable, his shoulders loose and his head tipped to the side like a collie begging attention.

_ Right _ . And the interloper was high priestess of the nearest temple. He looked down at the weapons on the man’s waist: there were small but plain imperfections in the metal of the scabbard, little nicks and pits from metal catching metal. The steel wasn’t ornate or fanciful – it was spartan to the point of boredom, something to break in some battle and then discard. It also had a curve to it that resembled  Gerudo scimitars more than a  Hylian broadsword. It did not have the light look of a foil carried for looks, or speed in drawing: it was a medium weight weapon capable of fast attacks and the power necessary to smash through an opponent’s defenses, or disorient them with broad flashes of reflected light. 

The daggers he kept were more attractive: gold finished metal on the cross guard and pommel with a hilt wrapped in violet cloth. Perhaps family weapons, decidedly older and more precious than the sword. The interloper considered whether it was only a nobleman or if he was staring down a knight, though one with a casual stance and an absence of livery. He did not wear the white and black of Weiss’s uniform or the blue of Hyrule’s royal family. Perhaps he had not been on official business today.

_ Or maybe he’s a black knight, like you. That might be worst of all. _

The interloper set his teeth in an uneasy smile. Most knights weren’t friendly to begin with, bu t meeting someone suspicious (he knew what all of this looked like. He hoped, but couldn’t afford to  _ bet _ , his companion didn’t) in an alley and acting as if they were budding companions was off in a big way.

The bald-faced liar was regarding him still with his friendly, nigh-indulgent smile. 

The interloper’s answering smile slipped, and he could feel his expression shift into a full glare as the man started, “If it’s not too forward of me.”

It was almost certainly going to be too forward of him.

“-Who do you serve?”

There was the rub. The knight couldn’t really think it was that easy? Unless he would get angry at a refusal. Not that the interloper would ever  give out a  _ no _ when misinformation was a better diversion. He swept his arm across his front and bowed at the waist with a flourish of his wrist. “The divine Three.” When he came up it was to clasp his hands in front of his chest. He did his very best impression of a squealing devoted. “Wise  Nayru , Beloved  Farore and Fearsome Din.” 

… Was that… laying it too thick for an avid worshipper? Ma ybe he could pass it off as being a strange foreigner. He hadn’t gotten the Weiss accent down anyway.

The knight looked him over, from muddy foot to ruined clothes to unkempt head, and seemed to consider it. 

“I think,” (The interloper didn’t really care what the knight thought, but okay.) “I would  have  expected a different answer.” The knight smiled at him again, and this time it looked like it was amusement curling his mouth. The interloper glowered at him, a little, and the knight laughed and waved both hands like he was warding off a verbal attack. No matter!” 

_ Rude.  _

And the knight smiled wider, and affected a little bow that made the interloper seethe with the urge to smack him while he was down. So,  _ so _ rude. “Servant of the Three, then, I don’t suppose you ’re lost?”

Lost wasn’t exactly how he’d put it. He remembered how he’d gotten here. The whole twisting way.

“Because I intend to escort you either way.” the knight said, and the interloper thought,

_ Of course _ _ you  _ _ do _ _ . Heavens damn you for it.  _

“And,” the kn ight continued, with a knowing sort of look. “if you were looking for a way out of the city that won’t lead into another chase, endangering my coworkers,” The nobleman offered him another smile he didn’t trust, and again his arm. “I would be flattered to o ffer it to you.”

Maybe men being led about by the elbow was just a  _ thing  _ in Weiss. The other one he’d met had insisted on it too. It was still annoying, though, and he still wondered if it was a slight.

The interloper’s eyes widened, and he put a hand to h is mouth to think. The knight really did not look much older than him. He was almost certainly Hylian. If he tried anything, the interloper thought he could try stealing  _ his  _ face... and if he really was as noble as he was playing at, it was a way out.

It could also be a trap. The alley had been. The interloper was very good at getting out of tight places, at least as good as he was at getting into them. Was this one worth edging into? He considered the space  around them , how much time he’d have to get up a building if he shoved the man now and bolted. A knight who smiled and lied to his face  _ convincingly  _ wasn’t someone to turn his back on without care.

The knight who was waiting patient in the alley mouth for an answer.

The minstrel could reach out and kill him. They were close enough to touch now - he could see the color of the man’s eyes, they were so near one another. The minstrel let himself imagine it in the passing of a heartbeat. A knife across the throat, a body in a puddle, and him disappearing down the road wearing the face of a nobleman and leaving what looked like a beggar dead in his wake. He could get away clean. He could-  _ don’t think about it. _

The knight’s eyes stayed focused on his, calm amber. He focused on that color and thought of the deser t. He thought about-.

His arm shot out before he could change his mind. It didn’t bear considering.

* * *

  
The knight had not been intending on picking up a criminal when he’d got to work that morning. He figured he would investigate reports of a Deadhand (they’d been accurate, and he’d cut it down once they’d evacuated the block) and then maybe catch up on pap erwork if it went well, and see a medic if it hadn’t. 

But midmorning saw those plans shot, because while he was cleaning the old black blood from his weapons a patrol of guards ran by shouting for a strange man doing strange things, and, well, his mother had always warned him about his curiosity. (And that same curiosity pushed him to follow his father’s footsteps into knighthood, instead of leaving as a caravan guard like his sisters had.)

So he followed the noise, caught someone who knew what was going  on, and asked what all the fuss was about. 

And he had to admit that he was  _ interested _ , so he picked out the places a spooked saboteur might go running off to, and put people on them, and he waited. 

(He took the most likely one himself. And he wasn’t disa ppointed.)

It was probably a waste of time, but, well. It was something new, and something that wasn’t dark or dire or another body. It was something he could do something with. So he didn’t mind waiting, not like he could have. There wasn’t a lot to look  forward to these days, so the knight grabbed distractions when they came along with both hands. 

The person that ended up in the alley wasn’t much to look at. The knight though they were probably a Sheikah - they wore the blue, tight clothes he’d come to a ssociate with them, anyway - and they certainly didn’t look  _ capable  _ of what the guards were saying they’d done. He figured that those might have been an attempt to save face, as much as anything - of  _ course  _ the guards couldn’t catch one man, not if he was  doing flips off of walls and vaulting between buildings like a fairy come to make games of them - but then he’d seen the man running himself. 

Over the rooftops. And then he’d watched as the Sheikah slithered down the steep three-story walls of a pair of b uildings and yeah, okay, he bought it and he was very interested. 

So he waited nearby and he watched. And when the guards finally stopped at that alley to check it, he stepped in himself and sent them on.

And he’d come face to face with the interloper. 

( And sure, he wasn’t much to look at. But did he need to be, when he could move like that?)

The kid had muddy clothes and a blandly pleasant expression that said nothing, excepted for the pinched look around his eyes. It got more pronounced when the knight  annoyed him - which the knight did. Often. He’d even coaxed a few snarls out of the Sheikah, and that was - even more interesting. Almost promising. 

He wanted to know more. Pushing too much was a bad idea - could result in broken limbs or lost fingers - b ut he needed a starting point, he needed information, he needed to know if this was the sort of person who could be loyal to people or ideas or only to themselves. 

And he needed to get them out of the city before one of the fool guards set them off and so meone ended up gutted. 

So he offered them an out, and his arm. And they’d waffled, stared him down, and then lunged forward and- took it. 

So that was something. It wasn’t quite hope - things were too dire in Weiss, anymore, for hope - but it was promisin g. The knight smiled at the Sheikah, and meant it. “Glad to have you.” He said, “Let’s get going, shall we?”

* * *

Half an hour into their walk the most surprising thing for the minstrel was still that he’d tentatively trusted the man and not been run through for it. There was no ambush. Sure, he was still certain it was coming in the next twenty steps… and the next… but that it hadn’t yet was frankly a miracle. He could even see the wall out of Bremen approaching. He hoped the poor old fool realized that with that in sight he was only a bird on the night wind.

As they turned another bend in the street the knight unwound the scarf from around his neck, catching the interloper’s eye and making him wary. The knight, without changing expression, unfolded that scarf to its  full and impressive width, and offered it to the minstrel. “Wrap your head in it. Better to be suspicious than striking, don’t you think?”

“Striking? I suppose I should thank you for the compliment – but you’re a little old for me.” He brushed back his hair and stared at the nobleman, who gazed back with his lips turned down. Seemed like he was serious… The interloper accepted the wool to examine it. There weren’t razors or wire woven in – not even needles, though he was inclined to check. Magic allowed for all sorts of terrible innovation.

When he glanced up and saw a gatehouse he understood that it was probably, actually, sincerely maybe-not  a trap and released his escort’s arm long enough to lay the scarf over his hat and then wind it around his face and neck like a desert traveler. He took the knight’s arm again and lowered his eyes to conceal their color, hunching his shoulders and doing his best to resemble a woman.

“… ah… redheads now, Sir  rrd ?” One of the guards questioned on their approach. His escort was definitely a knight, then. He made note of the name so he could go ferreting out information at a later time. If he got out  alive.

The knight hummed, clapping his free hand down over the interloper’s and rubbing it (it startled the minstrel into looking up. The knight wore a broad smile, directed at the guard like a weapon. The sight of it wasn’t a comfort to him.)

“No, no. Just seeing Grandmother  Furosa off.” The knight said, and the guard-  the  guard looked as confused as the interloper felt alarmed. 

_ Probably wondering if this is someone he’s supposed to remember,  _ he supposed. It was an expression he was used to seeing – but one g enerally followed by fear and pain.

The other guard looked startled and maybe disbelieving. Well, Weiss wasn’t known for its friendliness for other races, not recently. Not since the Duke’s vouching for  Ganondorf nearly ended in the murder of the king – there was something  _ off  _ about a noble proudly outlining an association thus. The interloper watched through narrowed eyes while the guard searched out the courage for  a terrible , simple question. “Your... your grandmother is a  Gerudo , sir?”

“Of course!” The knight’s eyes glittered in the lamplight, like gold or like dragon-fire. “I am of proud  Gerudo lineage, you know. I even have my membership card with me, if you’d like to see it.” The knight beamed and rubbed the interloper’s shoulder with a warm hand, in a way that felt almost genuine and friendly. It left his skin crawling – what a fantastic liar he had as an escort! “Now, kindly let us through so I can walk her to the road before the last light is gone? She has a caravan to catch up with.”

The guard flinched away from them. “Yes, Sir. Raise the gates! Two through!”

As they passed the thick iron of the bars, the interloper heard another guard hiss to the first, “He’s fucking with you, mate.”

The knight-escort reached out and snagged a li t lamp from the ironwork of the gatehouse window.

The interloper let his eyes slide to the controlled happiness that his companion wore, while they both pretended they hadn’t stopped in the shadow past the gate to eavesdrop.

The second guard said, “He’s as Hylian as the princess.”

And left the first absolutely bewildered. “Then who was  _ that? _ ” And the interloper could sort of understand his surprise. He wondered how often his escort made the habit of telling obvious lies, that it was not seen as a problem a s much as a predicted and acceptable quirk. Maybe it was the noble blood. They seemed to get away with an awful lot by dint of that whole  _ Divine Ordain  _ thing.

_ You used to get away with a lot by way of Divine Ordain. Don’t forget yourself. _

The guards were s till hissing back and forth. It wasn’t flattering. “Probably a whore he wants to fuck outside the gossip-district.” The interloper’s eye twitched. The guard continued, “He’s forty and unmarried, what do you think?”

Nine steps and seven alarming imaginings  of that sort of scenario later…

“I’m not a whore, right?” The interloper muttered, troubled.

His knight-escort made a face at him - one roughly equivalent to a child confronted with leafy greens for supper. “ _ Are you a-  _ not for me, certainly! Please don’t i mply untoward things, Servant of the Three.” The knight shook his head. “I am taking you to the swamp.”

Weiss’s swamp was haunted. At least, according to Hylian bumpkins, who probably weren’t entirely wrong: people died in swamps and came back as redeads.  Sometimes poes or dead hands, too. It was unfortunately common, but a handful of undead did not a haunting make.

It was also a dumping ground for murder victims, but saying that recollection put him on edge would be an inaccuracy. The whole situation kept him nervous from start to hopefully-encroaching end, and one more bit of creepy distasteful knowledge hadn’t much tipped the scales. Until they were out of earshot of  guards he wouldn’t kick up a fuss.

He looked around and… they were basically out by now . The lantern lights of the city had faded and gone. “Why the swamp?” He asked, glancing at the lantern hung from the knight’s loose fist.

The man shrugged, expression falling to something calm and almost cold. With the friendliness faded and the mask fall ing off - the interloper wondered if he’d see the noble’s honest intentions soon. “Well- the only thing that could hope to find you out here is a Sheikah, between the poes, illusions, and the fox lights…” He looked out through the trees, took a breath like he was steeling himself. “Don’t lose yourself to them.”

Oh, so the interloper was being sent to die. Well, that was perfect; if the knight thought the swamp would kill him unaided he was comically mistaken.

The interloper grasped his borrowed scarf and be gan to peel it off. “You don’t look forty.” 

The knight glanced at him. “Huh? - oh, you heard that...” He pursed his lips and said, “I take care of my skin.”

The interloper’s eyes flickered, for a moment glowing with power - he knew the knight saw it, beca use the man’s eyes widened. The interloper sent him a smile that lacked friendliness, but made up for it in teeth. “Bathing with the blood of virgins, right?”

The knight snorted, instead of flinching, and bit his lip. “Um… I’ll be honest, friend, I’m not sure how to respond to that.”

The interloper dropped the smile and stared at him. “You don’t look  _ thirty _ , and I don’t like liars.”

The knight put up both hands. “I’m forty! Really, I just have... good genes.” He waved as if to chase the concern off, but sadly it stayed put. “My mother barely looks fifty, and she’s - goodness – pushing seventy now.” He cast a frown at the interloper and added, “And I haven’t  _ lied _ to you.”

The interloper put a hand on his hip, near the hilt of a hidden knife. “ _ You said _ you were a courtier.”

“I said I was a courtier under the last Duke.” Sir Aldhard of the Blatant Lies corrected. If Sir Aldhard was even his proper name - surely no guards were actually stupid enough to keep talking without checking for eavesdroppers at their  gate?

“And that my weapons were for show.” The knight continued. “And that’s all true – I do my very best not to fight anyone! Including you.”

The interloper ignored him. He shoved the scarf at his escort’s chest. “Nice to meet you. Good evening.”

“Good evening,” The knight said  as if out of habit. He gave the scarf, and the interloper, strange looks. "Wait, are you trying to give this back?”

Should he not be? Was it a tracker? Maybe poisoned? “Yes.” The interloper said. “Definitely.” If nothing else, he did not want to be indebit ed to this man. 

“Please keep it.” The knight waved both hands, “It suits you better than me, and my neighbor – she’s this sweet old woman – she keeps making them for me. I don’t have the room to store many more, and I never have the time to wear them all anyway and it’s really such a waste-”

He was annoying. Didn’t nobles learn when to shut up?

_ Only around their betters. Are you  _ anyone’s  _ better anymore? _

“ Shut up .” The interloper ordered, fingers curling in the wool. The knight grinned at him, obviously pleased with himself – it reminded the interloper of the way the fairy-child tended to grin whenever he’d gotten his way. It was  _ annoying _ . “Aren’t knights supposed to  _ receive  _ tokens and not  _ give _ them?”

The look the knight gave him was too earnest to be comfortable. “You seem like you need the luck. I’m not the one who hid over a deadhand’s corpse for half an hour today, I mean.” The knight flashed a smile alongside the reminder, and clapped him on the sh oulder. The minstrel almost gave him a needle in the hand for it, but the knight didn’t seem to notice his tension or his anger. He probably wouldn’t have even cared, the damnable gadfly.

“Next time you come to Bremen,” The knight inclined his head, “You m ight try walking in the gates instead of climbing over them.”

“And if I do?” The minstrel did, of course, intend to go back once the search had died down. Then he’d need to see if he’d been compromised – he’d noticed an increase in guard patrols well before he’d gotten caught today, whenever he’d  gone to send a letter.

The knight patted his shoulder again. “Go ahead and look me up. At the very least I can keep an eye out for you.” The knight paused, then supposed, “And on you.” He canted his head with the  same friendly smile he’d led the interloper out of the alley with. “I’m  Aldhard Voss.” 

Goddesses take him. 

“Pleasure to make your acquaintance, sir…?”

The knight had to wait for a response, because the interloper was occupied. Voss. Aldhard Voss. He w as having a short and unhappy recollection of his day, updated to include that bit of information with all the ugly implications it came with. Not only had he made rank amateur mistakes, they’d culminated in the Knight Captain of Weiss cornering him in an  alley and leading him around by the arm  _ all evening _ .

This was it. Proof. He was the worst information appropriation specialist ever. He failed as a spy.

There was only one reasonable response to this. “I’m going to go drown myself in the swamp now. Good ev ening, Sir Aldhard.” He took three steps back in swift succession. The knight blinked at him – Sir Aldhard Voss the damn fox-tongued liar seemed confused by his blunt, dramatic admission, a normal response from someone who didn’t know the interloper long o r well.

“Ah,” The knight held up a hand. “Wait, you still haven’t given me a name. And you really oughtn’t joke about that, the water is deep and there’s the old beldam…”

_ “Good evening _ , _ sir Aldhard. _ ” He continued weaving himself into the trees until he’d d isappeared entirely from the knight’s range of sight.

Aldhard stood watching on the shore a while, the light from his lantern glittering on the calm-looking water at the bottom of a short drop for the narrow river – wide creek? – whatever - before he tur ned and walked back for the city.

The strange wavering yowl of an animal started up somewhere deeper in the fens. In his haste to get away, and his newness to the woods, the interloper would be later embarrassed to admit that the noise had startled him.

The minstrel mis s tepped, and missed the shore entirely- frigid water rush to wrap around every inch of his person. It was not shallow - just as the knight had promised him. There was not even a bank. When he swept a hand for the ledge, he’d been walking on he realized it was undercut.

He thought he heard a shout above the sucking, splashing cacophony  of water rushing around him. He kicked for the surface - saw the flash of a hand through the mire, moonlight-pale. It swiped at him as he passed by. He kicked his legs harder, and his head broke the surface for a moment of precious air before the deep current swallowed him again. A memory of swimming with Princess  Ruto’s guards rose in his mind, foggy with age and animal-fear.

_ “ _ _ If the _ _ water catches you and you can’t surface, don’t exhaust yourself trying in the same spot. Relax and swim deeper – the gentler current there will pull you away.” _

The minstrel kicked towards the center of the channel and let him carry him past the churning current the falls made, and kicked  _ off  _ the shallow riverbed _ \-  _ he broke the surface with a gasp and this time stayed up. He and swung his head around, looking for hazards or an escape. The knight was running along beside the shore – seeing as much made the minstrel wonder if the intention had really been to leave him to die. Then he wondered if he’d see the knight drown instead.  Hylians couldn’t see in the dark, and the swamp was a treacherous place even in daylight. 

“I’m fine!” He shouted, though this was an exaggeration (actually,  a blatant untruth. The knight did not hesitate, so the minstrel suspected he did not buy it). The minstrel had inhaled a bracing mouthful of muddy water and he was pretty sure his limbs were trying to freeze off, though he’d only been in the water a misera ble minute or three. (Time distorted when you were almost drowning, he could say with authority and past experience.)

“Being swept downriver is not fine!” The knight shouted back, frantic hands patting over his tunic like he was looking for a pocket. The interloper turned his attention back to the river, and steering himself  _ away _ from fallen trees and detritus… and trying to avoid the churning water that warned him of holes and rocks. Alas, the current was very insistent. A swirling eddy dragged him towards one such location – looking at the water boiling over, he considered that even a Zora would struggle to swim free of it. He took a deep breath of air before he hit it, and went under.  Again he forced himself to relax, trying to swim towards the bottom. His mind was  _ screaming  _ and he forced it to quiet,  _ shut up shut up we can panic later or we can DIE and it’ll be someone else’s problem -!  _

Branches scraped his face and clothes, snagged in his hair – he pushed them apart with his hands and felt his feet s crape the bottom of the water. He pushed off with a soft, desperate exhale and felt his side scrape along a smooth bank. A hand whipped into the water again – it actually succeeded in smacking him over the back of the head, he almost lost the air in his l ungs to a gasp– and he grabbed it. It hauled him out of the icy water into the frigid air, toward the knight struggling to pull him from the river. He had a rope looped around his other hand with the end of it tethered to a tree.

The interloper had a brief, incongruent moment of respect that Weiss’s knight captain was valiant but not stupid.  Aldhard grabbed him around the ribs and hauled him out of the water with a snarl of effort that ended with them nearly falling on the  muddy shore .

“Are you alright?” Aldhard asked, rough-voiced. He was patting the interloper down for injuries – the interloper responded to this by swatting his hands away and shoving off of him.    
Saved thrice in an evening by the same gentleman. This was a bit past humiliating.

Aldhard cracked him a pale, wan smile. “Well, if you’re that disagreeable then you must be.” He said, “Do you need a potion?”

The minstrel stepped away from him. “I’m fine.”

The knight didn’t try to follow him. But he held out his hand. “A fire, perhaps?”

“I don’t want to be seen out here.” The interloper looked back towards the path they’d taken – the slippery bank and their shared, delightful run through the currents of the White-Running. It was rendered black by moonlight, a damn sorry joke.

“You will ta ke me at my word about the water now?” The knight pressed. His pupils were blown wide with fear. The interloper couldn’t see their color anymore, could pretend they didn’t unsettle him. 

He waved off the knight’s concern, shook his head. “Yes, yes.”

The kn ight reached and patted his shoulder, same as he’d done in the city – the interloper’s skin crawled worse than ever, craving the warmth another body provided while his mind screamed for him to  _ get away please now _ . He made a point of stepping further back f rom his unwanted escort, out of reach. The knight did not seem offended. “You forget again to offer your name.”

“And you persist in demanding it.” The interloper set a hand on his  hip, glancing down once to confirm his knives were in their sheaths and holsters (they were, thank the Three. He did not want to explain himself to the armorer again). “I,” He gave a self-important pause, intending to play up his aggrievance for all its worth, “Am a travelling minstrel.” He tipped his chin up. It was close enough to a name as any. He waited for a demand of what he played or what he meant when he went running through the city. Perhaps even a tragically belated attempt to arrest him.

The knight’s eyes gleamed, and his lips twitched in an apparent struggle to stay down-turned. The minstrel glowered at him. Neither of them said anything a long minute.

The knight cleared his throat, one hand coming up over his mouth in a loose fist.  _ Hem.  _ “A musician?” His eyes met the interloper’s without apparent discomfort. A minor annoyance to be added to the heap he was hoarding. “I pray you’ll be cautious.” The knight gestured to the swamp. “Weiss is not a kind place to outsiders.”

The interloper scrunched his nose at the jab at his failures of the day, if not the very hour. He s aid nothing.

The knight continued, “And I pray that after that baptism the region will favor you… May it grant a swift and safe passage.”

“You speak as if it’s alive.” The interloper murmured.

The knight fixed him with a grim sort of smile. “It is.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I debated the knight's scene pretty heavily before including it and forgot to mention it to my beta reader, so I had a somewhat organic response from her for it. I'm hoping she was a good gauge, but we'll see I guess. Opinions on him and his motives are welcome! I do love hearing the impressions people got (and if they're not what I intended, I can adjust things...)  
There is a companion fic that went up on my birthday. It has mild spoilers for Hallowed - specifically regarding the Minstrel's past - but probably won't really ruin anything for you if you want to read it. It's set during the Seven Year War and concerns the Minstrel. It's mostly a character and relationship study.


	6. Eleven Months

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Link adopts a pet - is adopted by a pet? Is exhorted into keeping a pet. Also, he has a bad time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Been sitting on this one excited for a while, since Weiila also has a scene with a Stalfos and betaing her fight scene made me really really want to post this. If you haven't read anything of Weiila's, she has an Ocarina of Time fic (kind of) concerning a bad timeline where the Hero loses. It's Zelda-centric and she's a badass, which I'm always here for, and I can't recommend it enough. (Zelda/Link is a pairing in it if that sweetens the pot for anyone.)  
This is a Link chapter without any Minstrel scenes because I had to cut it down a lot. Action chapters should be shorter! I hope you enjoy it, and happy 2020! This fic has officially been worked on for five years behind the scenes... and 13 years if you count the original story...

Link insisted on accompanying Saria to the Temple, though they didn’t leave for it until the sun was high in the sky above them.

There were a lot of crows out in the forest – he counted five on the route to the forest temple, and a small flock of them scattered around the clearing leading in. Judging by the smell, a wolfos had caught something in the area the night before. It had probably scattered the pieces.

Link watched a crow peck at the ground a few feet from him and wrinkled his nose in disgust when he saw a strip of ruddy flesh come up from the ground, fur still attached in rough clumps. He changed his assessment from ‘probably’ to ‘certainly’.

The smell grew truly unpleasant as the noontime humidity made its appearance. Link held a hand over his face and wondered what cruel god made corpses rot so fragrantly, and curled up against his pillar to lament his terrible fate. One of the crows landed nearby and cawed, flapping its wings in his direction. Link noticed bits of skin caught on its talons and gagged, covering his mouth and squinting in an attempt to _see less. _“Go away.” He mumbled into the palm.

The crow spread its wings wider and bend forward, wobbling them in a gesture he usually saw between larger birds – ones trying to intimidate other animals into backing off.

He wasn’t impressed. “I’ve killed giant guay, you know.” He said to the crow. It hopped in place and shrilled something he took to mean that it did not care, and continued its attempts to menace him.

Link picked up a pebble and tossed it in the direction of the crow, aiming for a space several inches shy of it. The crow jumped back and let out a honking noise that left his ears ringing. Right, don’t antagonize the tiny noise box.

But it was his spot the bird was trying to chase him from. He pushed himself to his knees, reaching out a hand to swipe at the bird. The crow lunged forward and Link snapped his hand back. “Hey!”

The crow screeched back, and while Link was sure everyone he knew would call him senseless for it, he shouted, “Stop being a jerk!” While trying to warn off his company.

It didn’t exactly work – the other crows of the clearing turned to watch him. Link paused, and raised his gaze. He cast a cautious look from one, to another, and another… all watching him… quite unfortunate.

“Uh.” He hoped they weren’t like cuccos. “… stop… stop being jerks, guys.”

Another crow shrilled at him. Instead of going back to peacefully eating their half-rotten, stinking, foul bounty, the crows began to walk (and hop, right over the tufts of long grass, Farore rescue him) towards him. They were converging in a semi-circle around his column. For a moment as he reached for his sword, Link wondered if he would have to explain a murder of crows lying dead on the temple steps to Saria later.

The first crow that had tried to warn him off lowered its wings and edged forward, letting out low croaking noises. Link twisted and moved to his knees, dug his boots in and prepared to stand- a noise from the direction of the Forest Temple left the birds frozen for a moment. He heard, “Link?” And his gaze darted up – Saria stood on the temple steps, well before sunset, confusion on her face.

The gathered birds let out a cacophony of caws and shrieks, and took off into the trees as Saria descended to approach them.

She watched the birds with no small measure of bewilderment. “What was that about?”

Link held his sword tighter a moment before shifting to his feet.

Something squelched under Saria’s boots, and she paused to give it a disgusted look. “What _is _this?”

“Something a wolfos left.” Link shrugged. “Probably happier not knowing.”

Saria grimaced at him and shook her head. “Okay. And the, um, the birds?”

He didn’t have a ready answer for that. “They were being jerks.”

“… okay.” Saria didn’t appear to buy it. She took his arm. “You’ll want to hear this.”

“Always.” Link agreed, slipping his right hand into hers. His left went to the blade on his back and drew it.

The hilt in his hand is a comforting weight, almost a match to what the Mastersword had been. It was almost as sharp, almost as fine. Almost everything – and it was Zelda’s gift for his departure. There was something ugly and poetic about her gift resembling one thing and revealing itself to be another. But a weapon was a weapon, and Link no longer felt comfortable walking the earth without one.

Saria kept quiet until they were past the labyrinth, and Link had swatted a few deku scrubs into quivering submission with their own nuts. “Sage Ruto sent one of her people to a town near us.”

Link took a moment to consider how he felt about the title ‘Sage Ruto’ and decided to settle on _conflicted. _He nodded for Saria to go on, and she sucked in a breath.

“And, um, they found something bad? But we don’t know how bad.”

_Why not?_ He arched a brow at her, and Saria winced. She spoke in a soft voice that was almost lost to the droning of insects. “They’re missing. She’s asking the others to help.”

Link’s lips twitched. Saria frowned and added, “I didn’t agree to ask you to help. I just… thought you’d want to know. The zora are your friends, right?”

Link considered it, shrugged. “They were. When I was a kid.”

Saria smiled at him, shaky on the edges. “That wasn’t so long ago.”

“What town?” Link squeezed her hand, and felt her relax a fraction.

“Some place called Bremen.” She missed his confused look, or else didn’t understand it, and continued without time for him to question it, “It’s south of here. In a swamp called Weiss… I don’t know what the name means, don’t ask.”

Link made the note to ask someone else. “Not that I’m volunteering to help, but. The zora Ruto sent - how would I identify them?”

Saria startled. “Oh! Um, they’re not.” At a blank look from Link, she clarified, “They’re not a zora. She says they’re a landdweller?”

Link cocked his head. Ruto tended to look down on landdwellers by default. _Seems like all of the outside races look down on the others, _he thought, _can’t really hold it against her in that context…_

“Any identifiers?”

Saria nodded. “He’s a man. Um, she called him handsome - and he has yellow hair like you and Fado.” She paused, “She called him taahn, but I’m not sure what that means.”

… what? Oh… right. All of the kokiri were pale. Link was pale, too, after a year back in the forest. The sun just didn’t hit them like it did outsiders. He’d had to ask Malon about it once, ages ago.

He chewed his cheek. “It means his skin is darker. Like a gerudo or a… like Impa.”

Thankfully, Saria did not question his fumble. “Oh. And he plays music!”

No one in the domain matched any of that. Link shook his head. “On?”

“Something with strings.” Saria chirped, then continued on dutifully, “There were problems with the water. And monsters, a lot of them. She thought it would be better to send someone who could ask around in the city to see what was going on.”

Link had to shake himself out. It wasn’t - but the idea was in his mind now. _Sheik isn’t real. Saria is scared. Pay attention to her._

Link squeezed Saria’s hand. She paused in her murmuring and looked up at him, cracking a small smile that didn’t reach her eyes. She took in a breath. “It could… I’m a little worried it could affect us. If it’s something in the water, you know. We aren’t so far away. And monsters migrate.”

That didn’t sound like an unreasonable fear to him. “What sort of monsters?”

Her eyes flickered. “… redeads. Gibdos. Um… things like that.” Saria mumbled, “They sound… bad.” And no wonder. Those would happily attack anything with life.

The forest already had its share of stalfos. Link didn’t particularly want to add _fleshy corpse monsters _to the leagues of its inhabitants. “Okay.” The forest was his home, and the Kokiri were his concern. He needed to be here if monsters were travelling out from Laketower. He had no idea if the forest stalfos would attack redeads or help them in.

“You’ll tell me if there’s more?” Link asked, pulling her to his side for a brief hug. Saria looked up at him and beamed, fingers curling in his tunic.

“Always.”

* * *

A week had passed since he’d seen a shadow with wings stretch across his wall in the dark of the night, and Link had not slept better any night since. It was not that it came to see him every night – on the contrary Link had not seen it since.

But he lay awake waiting for it, and saw the shadows morph and form at the corners of his eyes, slipping back into nothing when he turned to face them. An unseasonable mist fell over the Kokiri village, muffling all it touched.

Saria walked to the temple every day, yet, and every day a flock of crows followed she and Link on their winding path through the forest. Link heard the click and rattle of stalfos from the trees, but they never broke cover to approach the path.

He’d begun having vivid dreams, the likes of which he hadn’t endured since before Ganon had invaded the castle and attacked the king of Hyrule. Sheik running through a sinking swamp, eyes wild as something unseen pursued him. Zelda, collapsing in the castle, a goblet of wine staining her gown as she fell. A blond knight riding hard on horseback with a baby clutched in her arms, fleeing a band of masked bandits, and a sheikah with eyes that burned like fire raising her blade to battle.

Link knew how to battle enemies and win. He wasn’t sure how to purge mist and bad feelings without a boss to track them to, however.

He remembered a lot of crows in the shadow temple. A lot of corpses too. The association added to his worry in the least helpful way.

All of this ran through his mind again in a rush the moment he stepped outside to meet Saria (for once he was leaving before she’d appeared to harass him), and stopped. Because there was a ring of crows outside his house, weighing judgment on a ragged one in the center.

The finest crow in the circle, with glossy smooth feathers, looked at the raggedy one in center. For a long moment it gazed at the other crow, which was scolded with sharp beams whenever it tried to edge towards the ring of its peers. Link felt his heart slow and press into his throat, rendering him mute. The soft croons and coos of the murder seemed to push back all the other sound of the forest until they were scarcely audible over the _thumpthumpthump_ of Link’s heart.

The lead crow tipped back its head and tilted it to the side, feathers ruffling. It spread its wings and beat them- one, two- and flew away from the ring, away the bedraggled defendant.

Link’s heart skipped. He jumped over the rail of his house, racing against what he knew was coming – the crows made to converge – his boots skid against the ground with a noisy THUD – the murder scatters into cacophony. The screams make his ears ache. He crouched over the defendant where it has raised its rings and fluffed its plumage in an effort to look bigger. It quivered in the grass and let out a reedy hiss.

After everything that has happened over the week and especially today, Link is ready for a bite. But when he curls his hands around the crow to lift it from the ground, the peck doesn’t come and the crow shrinks in his arms. That worries him more – a wild animal should fight anyone grabbing at it. He curves his arm so he can cradle it to his chest and takes off for Saria’s at a lope, half wrapping the bird in his tunic. His glance down catches red eyes peering out at the village with the startling intelligence native to all crows, tempered by a weariness that he understands and feels injured to recognize in an animal.

Saria was the Forest Sage, and the most kind and loving person he had ever met. Surely she would know if the crow was unwell in some way Link couldn’t divine.

Could crows drink potion? Link pondered that the short distance to her home. He called her name to announce himself before ducking under the archway, pushing aside the curtain.

“Link?” Saria was on the floor beside her bed – she had been pulling on her boots. Her eyes fell on the lump of feathers he held and widened. “Who is that?”

Link crossed the room to crouch beside her and held out his small companion. “Crow. The flock was going to kill it.”

Well. ‘Small’ was a relative term to corvids. The fuzzy thing took up both of his hands, quite a bit more space than most birds could brag about. It nudged its beak against Saria’s reaching hands, and her mouth pressed to a thin line.

“I see… Well, I’ll check him over. Go fetch some water and – I should have nuts in the pantry. Those too.”

Link jumped to his feet to do as bade.

* * *

A few hours later Saria stood up to approach him with the crow cradled in both hands. Link stood to meet her and cast her an imploring look, which she answered with a shake of her head.

The crow – groomed to a semblance of fineness now - ruffled its feathers and looked around from her arms without apparent care. Saria held out the bird to Link and said, “There’s nothing wrong with it.”

Gentle hands transferred their guest to Link. The crow clacked its beak and burrowed into his tunic. Saria nodded to him. “It just… likes you.” She supposed. “Maybe because its flock left it.”

“Oh.” Link ran a finger down its back – it cawwed and snuggled down against him. Perhaps it was cold. “Well… is that… normal?”

Saria shook her head. “I wouldn’t say so. But it’s… well, we’ve seen stranger things, haven’t we?”

Link supposed that was true. “So I just take it home with me?”

“I guess so.” Saria smiled. “You have an archway and a window, and crows are very smart. I’m sure it’ll know how to leave if it wants to.”

Link rubbed his finger under its chin and nodded to her. “… okay.” Well, he’d take care of it. He’d cared for a dragon! Surely a crow wouldn’t be so hard.

* * *

It had been three days since the crow had come to live with Link. In that time it had: stolen four pieces of jewelry from the Kokiri, tried to eat three fairies, and pecked him at least twelve times. It felt like someone stabbing him with a chisel. It was unnervingly akin to a tactile representation of Navi calling his attention to something - when he hadn’t listened the first nine repetitions. _Hey, listen! _In the dulcet tones of a psychotic predatory bird.

He minded, but not enough to kick out his new housemate. The bird cooed when he groomed it. It tried to preen its ragged feathers. It tried to groom Link, mostly by sitting on his head and nosing through his hair with the tip of its beak.

His house felt far less lonely with the noisy addition it made.

It also wasn’t a picky eater, which he found overwhelmingly in the crow’s favor. Volvagia had wanted to eat rocks, and it had been specific about them. In constrast, the crow ate whatever Link was eating. It drank water. It mostly went to the bathroom outside.

He wasn’t comfortable calling it a pet – kokiri didn’t have those, precisely, and a crow wasn’t like the dogs in Castletown – but it was his companion. His very opinionated housemate.

“Are you going to name that thing?” Mido asked, eyeing it as if it were going to fly over and start pecking him.

“Should I?” Link glanced at Mido and let out a hiss when the crow pecked _him, _evidently for not sharing the pine nuts he was eating – he shrugged, causing the crow to be thrown off or dig in its talons. It chose to dig in. Link let out a stream of expletives that left Mido blinking and a little dazed. 

“Keep that up and I’m naming you Extortion!” He threatened. The crow cawwed in his ear and beat its wings until Link gave it a nut, which it gobbled with greedy speed.

Mido seemed in awe. “Extortion’s the best name.” He decided, eyeing the bird. “Pest. Menace.”

“I’m not naming it Menace.” Link paused and amended, “I probably won’t name it Menace.” Saria wouldn’t like it.

Neither did the crow. “My ear!” Link grabbed for the tip. The crow hopped off of him with a smug sounding _caw_ and flew to alight on Saria, who regarded them both with no small amount of suspicion. “Are you two being mean to Meg?”

“No!” Mido defended, while Link narrowed his eyes and asked,

“You’re calling it _Meg?”_

“Yes.” Saria rubbed the crow under its chin. It preened.

“After the poe.” Link had to be sure, here.

“Yes.” Saria turned to the crow and said, “Meg is very nice, don’t you think?”

_Caw! “_Anyway,” Saria put a hand on her hip, “You haven’t named it.”

Link took that to mean he had to, else he have a poe’s namesake fluttering around his house for unknown years.

“Have you finished out here?” Saria continued. Link and Mido cast their gazes at the grass they hadn’t trimmed around the temple stairs and the rocks they hadn’t cleared from the temple path. Saria waited for the answer to her pointless question.

They squirmed, kokiri child and hylian adult. Nominal adult. Link felt like a kid most days. One that had saved a kingdom, but nonetheless.

“No! No!” The crow flapped its wings while crying out.

Mido and Link both jerked in shock and unhappiness. Saria scratched the crow’s chin and gave the two of them a disappointed look. “Well, I guess we’ll be here for a while then…”

Back to hauling at the stones and the grass they went, now under Saria’s watchful eye.

Link tripped more often than he stayed on his feet. It was an unpleasant afternoon, culminating in bug bites and a shallow cut on his calf – one fall had landed him on a stone. It was disagreeable.

“You dyin?” Mido asked, eyeing the slow trickle of blood down Link’s leg askance. Kokiri didn’t precisely bleed like hylians did; their blood was much thicker, and amber rather than scarlet.

“I’m fine,” Link shifted. “Just have to wash it.”

“… Good.” Mido turned away, face scrunching in disgust. Link supposed he couldn’t blame him. Blood seemed to be a common cause of alarm outside of the forest, though one that people had numbed to after years of war.

He remembered a hand reaching out to him in Kakariko when he’d been bleeding. A Sheikah who offered him bandages and a place to sleep.

Link wasn’t bothered by blood.

The crow jumped from Saria’s grasp to Link’s shoulder when she came nearer to examine him. “… if I didn’t know any better I’d think the tree roots were twisting to catch you…” she murmured, lips pursed with unhappiness. Link shrugged at her.

“I’m sure they weren’t,” He said, though he wasn’t.

Mido grunted and eyed him. “How sure is sure?”

“_Sure, _Mido.” Link repeated with a look down at him, eyes narrow. The tree roots stayed static on the ground, near flat. Not enough to catch his boots so thoroughly as they’d doing been all day. And yet they had. “I’m sure it’s nothing but clumsiness.”

Saria cast him an unhappy look.

Link looked back at her, and the crow bunted the top of its beak to Link’s chin. “Don’t tell me you’re worried, too.” Link patted Saria’s shoulder, careful of the force he used; she was so much smaller than him. “You’re the Sage. I think you’d know if the Forest decided I was a problem.” He offered up. She didn’t look convinced of this argument, but she dropped it for the moment. Link took the victory for what it was and herded her and Mido both back to the village.

The crow stayed settled on his shoulder for the duration of the trip. Link made it back without another incident.

After saying his goodnights to the kokiri (walking Saria to her door), Link walked through the calm and quiet dark of the village at twilight. The sky was streaked with hazy orange, and fog hung heavy on the ground. Somewhere in the forest a fox called out, _yiii yiii yiiii, _high and haunting. The click and clatter of stalfos patrolling, nearly on top of the village now that night had fallen, could be heard from the clifftops.

The buzz of the fairy chatter was almost painfully loud, intruding on his thoughts and trying to fill his mind. He didn’t have the patience to sort out what they were saying, only that there was a lot of it. It was the fall, and the fairies always seemed noisiest as the heat of summer leached away from them.

The crow on Link’s shoulder raised its head and looked around the heavy grey cloud that ensconced them – he wondered if its eyes could see better than his, cutting through the illusion of isolation. If it could it would be rather like a sheikah’s eyes, he considered.

Red eyes (at least, those belonging to a Sheikah) could divine illusion. He was a little in envy of them for the ability. He could hear the gods, but he couldn’t see the truth without a lens to help him.

Would seeing the truth have let him know he was being tricked? Words as much as magic were responsible for his situation. Perhaps if he had been raised as a Sheikah – the few that he’d known seemed impossible to pull the wool over, but he wasn’t sure that that was intuition.

Once, seven years ago, he’d been allowed into a Sheikah’s home. They had been a child not much older than him, angry at the world and cold to touch; they couldn’t trust. Perhaps, Link thought, one could only spot lies if they were looking.

He didn’t want to live looking for lies in everything, so he’d come back to the kokiri. Children, he’d found, were far less likely to lie to you. If they did it was rarely convincing, and their motives were simple to divine. Link often had to remind himself that the kokiri had lived many times longer than his lifetime and would continue long after he’d gone to the earth.

The path to his house felt unusually long, perhaps because the most of what he could see were vague shadows and detached lights.

The crow he carried murmured and nudged its beak to his jaw.

A strange, shifting _click click clatter_ floated down from his home. Link paused at the bottom, reaching for his sword. The crow on his shoulder took off with a caw that seemed obscene in the relative quiet of the forest. Link watched it fly up towards the house and then wheel away without warning. Rusted iron chased its path – Link moved several paces back, eyes focused on his balcony. Amber light eyes set deep in their sockets glittered, changing focus from the crow to Link’s face. Link stared back with an expression like stone and reached for his blade. There, wreathed by night and fog, stood a stalfos.

* * *

Sparks and rust glittered on the air. Link’s sword met the stalfos’ near the crossguard, chipping away another piece of ruined metal. The stalfos crowded him, taunting threats in a tongue he couldn’t speak yet knew instinctually.

_False! You who have called to us!_

Link ducked under its swing, stepped left and lunged for its midsection, aiming to smash the vertebrae apart with his blade. He stumbled back a moment later with his side stinging – the stalfos had twisted and half-parried him with a savage shield strike, knocking Link breathless. He stumbled back to recover – the stalfos pressed its attack. Link threw himself to the side to avoid its thrust and swung from his hip, a weak slash in another bid for distance.

The stalfos rattled at him, mouth yawning wide and soundless. The yellow white of its teeth glowed. obscenely pale, in the growing moonlight. It stalked around him, bones juddering under the facsimile of clothes and armor that time granted the ancient and vicious warriors of the wood. The vines of some strange plant curled out of the stalfos, wreathing ribs with brown and red leaves. The bright foliage looked like splashes of blood in the fairylight.

Distant, over the roar in his ears, Link heard the chatter of the fairies. They were calling that a monster was in the village – true – that the kokiri should stay inside – _good – _and that the hylian was fighting it – _why?!_

Link braced his boots against the ground and feinted right, then hit the stalfos’s shield arm where it had over extended to cover its unprotected side. _Crack._

The stalfos shot him a look of pure resentment as its arm juddered loose and bounced to the earth, still clutching its buckler. Link arched his brows and huffed, adjusting his hands on the hilt of his blade. _What?_ Now they were even.

The stalfos didn’t seem to agree with him on that. It roared in fury and went after him, wild as a wolfos in its strikes with no regard to discipline. Link was forced backward, struggling to parry the strikes without the speed or strength to riposte. The stalfos charged forward and caught his shoulder with its full weight, and Link went sprawling to the ground with a gasp. The stars in the sky seemed perilously close while his head spun, and his mind screamed _danger danger DANGER – left!_

He rolled to the right and curled up on himself, feeling the solid thud of a blade striking the earth. The stalfos jerked above him and struggled to free its sword – Link had a dizzy moment of thinking there were two, then realized it was his vision. He forced himself to pull his weapon from the cold earth and rolled onto his back, right beside the stalfos’ rusty sword with his knees drawing up to his chest in preparation.

_Thud._

The expression of disbelief was satisfying, even in stereo. It might almost make up for the headache Link had forming, if he survived this! He forced himself to his feet – his right ankle threatened to give out – and he stumbled closer to the stalfos while it was still thrashing on the ground in a pile of bones.

The head tried to hop past him - he caught it under the heel of his left boot. Pain raced up his right leg; he focused on the stalfos. The hand laying on the ground reached for him, straining for his left hand. The coalbright eyes rolled back in the skull to meet Link’s gaze.

He took a breath. Forced his foot down. _Crack._

The head disintegrated. The body followed suit, arms going last – they crumbled away still straining for him – and he heard a bird in flight. His housemate (he was not calling it Meg, he didn’t even know if it was a lady crow) landed on his shoulder and nudged him.

Link sheathed his sword and then reached up to rub its chin. _I’m fine_, he wanted to say to it, but after a battle his throat felt too swollen to speak. The crow chattered at him - if there were words Link couldn’t pick them out of the babble – while Link climbed up the ladder to check his house for any other surprises.

He found one. A necklace on his bed, metal discolored by age, with a glittering red gem set in the middle. It was startlingly clear – the reflection of his eyes blinked back at him when he gazed into it. The crow on his shoulder crooned.

The metal felt warm in his hands – under the glove of his left, the skin burned and itched. Link dropped the necklace and the sensation receded - his mark resumed dormancy. Link picked it up by the tarnished gold chain and set it across the room. The crow on his shoulder scolded him in a loud voice and pecked his ear. “Ow!” The crow jumped down and picked up the amulet in its talons, to - “Oh, no. No. No!” Ferry back to the bed.

Link followed it over, ankle twinging protest, and swiped a hand for the jewelry. “I’m not sleeping with your robber’s stash!”

_Caw!_ Peck! “Agh!”

It took three minutes of this before his ankle gave out. He hit the floor with a colorful set of words he dearly hoped the fairies wouldn’t go repeating. The crow hopped around his bed, preening and posturing. _Victory! _Its beady eyes gleamed. It ducked its head to take the chain in its beak, then burrowed under his pillow to store the piece underneath.

“No,” Link complained, “That thing is going to give me nightmares. Hey! Listen to me!”

The crow did not stop or listen to him. It settled on the pillow and looked as if it had, in fact, settled for the evening. Link’s ankle stung him while he dragged himself up into the bed, trying very hard to only use his arms and his left foot to get there. The age-worn cot groaned with complaint under him, and he had to lay without a pillow because the crow had claimed it and he didn’t want to be pecked for the offense of taking it back. For then. He might change his mind if his neck started to ache in addition to his side and ankle and... all of him, really.

The fight was bleeding out of him and the ache was setting in its place. How attentive of it. He considered the wall without seeing it – his ears were set to the fairy chatter from outside.

_Can’t believe a monster came into our village... what is it coming to?_

He wondered. His eyes fluttered, threatening to shut.

_Went straight... for the hylian, of course._

_Link?_

_Well, why would a stalfos ever bother a fairy? No, it went right for Link’s house._

He wished he’d been listening for it on the walk home, instead of his own thoughts. The fairies surely had mentioned it then. He could’ve gotten it by surprise.

The tension ebbed out of him with every breath as he edged closer and closer to sleep. No... it was just as likely that he’d have gotten himself thrown from the balcony or worse, trying to sneak up behind an enemy while it was in as narrow a place as his home... and he’d survived, and that was the only victory that really actually mattered.

The thought of what could have happened if Saria or another kokiri had been with him chased him into blood-touched dreams. They sung with the promise of the field after dark, skeletons clamoring to overtake him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Crows are apparently like homicidal toddlers with icepicks. Who knew?  
Uh, if you find an injured bird or any kind of animal, please call your local animal sanctuary or rescue operation. Don't try to handle it yourself if at all possible.   
And if you're having recurring nightmares, please talk to someone you can trust for help. That's not normal and not good and you deserve better.


	7. Ancestral

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The minstrel encounters a slight problem. Actually, it's less slight than 'as big as him and half again'. It's a bad week for Laketower.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another minstrel chapter.  
I'm leaving the line breaks from Dabble as they are, because I'm tired of hunting them down and fighting the formatting. Sorry if that's jarring for anyone.
> 
> Warning for character death.

There is a dead zora – red skin, white belly, eyes wide and set at the morning sky - within a kilometer of the drop site. They were dragged to a shady place under the trees, surrounded by high grass, and the minstrel only notices them at all because he’d gone to investigate the flash of brilliant red he’d seen in the morning half-light. He doesn’t stagger at the sight, but there’s a bitter moment spent thankful that it’s too early to have yet eaten. There’s a moment where he hesitates, looking around for potential enemies, before he kneels next to the body to examine it.

The skin is cool and clammy, bloating from exposure. The morning is damp with dew but the air hasn’t grown muggy with the midday heat, perhaps because of the lateness of the year. Ugly bruises litter body, and ring the neck in a blotchy facsimile of a noose. There are several lacerations on its abdomen and arms, as if from a sword fight. The body hasn’t begun to smell yet; it is still early morning. Where the zora is pressed into the earth, bugs have begun to – the minstrel looks away.

The zora’s clawed hand is curled, bloated and locked in death around a sealed waterproof case. One that should contain the minstrel’s missive. He stares hard at the case so he can’t focus on the discoloring extremities that grip it. The case was torn open. It sat empty, divested of its secrets. The zora had come for his drop and – someone had seen. Perhaps they’d been waiting.

His stomach twists anew. He’s _compromised, _and it’s cost someone besides him their life. Just now he has no way of knowing how much or how little about his operation is exposed. 

Without the message drops he cannot contact the Domain in confidence, and he cannot approach the Red Zora directly when he is not a Zora himself. The idea of leaving the corpse here for one of them to find when they go looking occurs to him, but he could never regard himself the same for entertaining it long. He discarded the notion.

An old memory surfaces in his mind, the first time he attended a funeral. If he only holds his breath he knows the scent of incense will wreathe around him. His brother’s voice murmurs, “_When someone we love dies, my precious one, we call the crows to them.”_

He crouches beside the Zora, looking at their face so he doesn’t have to stare at the wounds littering their body, thinks _what did you want, if this happened? _as if they can answer if he only concentrates hard enough. What comes back to him is, _You wanted it not to happen at all._

Being sure that he isn’t wrong is neither useful nor pleasant, here.

He reached a hand up and shut the eyes of the Zora. _I don’t know your name. _

_I cannot carry it to the mountain top. I am sorry._

So he finds himself with the corpse of an ally and no clear direction on what he should do with it. _We had no contingency plan for this, _he thinks, and feels foolish.

“_Why do we do that?” _His hand had tightened in his brother’s grip. _"Isn’t that mean?”_

“_No. I know it seems so, my little one, it isn’t. The birds are the messengers of the Grave Lord.” _In the confines of the shrine they had been reduced to whispers to keep from interrupting the other mourners. He remembered his brother had been solemn, the way one carried themselves when they acknowledged something to be sad, but they had no emotional connection to the proceeding. “_When they eat a body, they free the soul from inside of it, to carry it back to Him.”_  
  
  


But that is simply how funerals are carried out in Kakariko. He does not know if it is the same for zora, or if they even believe in the Lord of the Grave. How badly, he wonders, would it hurt for them to never _find _a body?

… the souls that linger become monsters, and a body left without funerary rites kept its spirit earthbound. How long would it take before they came looking? By the time he’d rotten?

By the time dogs had gotten to him?

The minstrel’s heart feels icy cold.

It takes longer than he’d like to decide, whether he’ll risk a week to keep vigil in the hopes of a zora coming looking, or to act himself now and damn the consequences.

But when it comes down to it… He’d rather have the hatred of a family for misappropriating the remains of one they loved, than the spirit of a comrade - of someone who’d died because he had not been careful _enough - _becoming weighted with malice and trapped in the world. He has seen enough of those from the War. 

He could confess his sins to princess Ruto when it was over.  
  
  


The zora’s skin is cool under his hand. He slides his fingers over the red crest of the male’s forehead to trace an eye, then follows the bridge of the nose down. He sweeps back up, completing the image in his mind of a teardrop, before he fans out his fingers and shuts the zora’s eyes. He kneels with his body curled over the head and folds his hands, bows his head, shuts his eyes. He is listening for the sound of someone approaching even as the prayer falls from his lips. It ends without interruption. He holds himself there, grounds himself through his shins, his knees, the tops of his feet. Tries to focus on the feeling of the earth that he is calling to reclaim a lost child. 

Minutes pass. The wind picks up and carries the noise of crows approaching.

That first funeral had been for a neighbor who had died, killed on a trip to Castletown because she’d been mistaken for a monster. The minstrel remembered her patience, and kind wrinkled hands; she had taught him how to brew tea with leaves from the forest. Then, he couldn’t fathom how any one could have made such a grievous error. 

“_Is he nice to the people he takes?”_

His brother had given him a smile, the sort of look you give to someone when you don’t know the answer yourself, but you’re charmed and saddened that they asked. _“I’m sure he is, lyre-song. After all… people keep going to him.”_  
  
  


The crows are feeding when the minstrel leaves the area, with a mind toward damage control. It feels woefully inadequate in the wake of a murder, but it is all he has to hold him. He breathes deep and quiet and reminds himself that if he doesn’t focus, he will be joining the zora. _Apologize to him then, why don’t you._

The letters had been discrete, without oblique reference to the domain or to princess Ruto or her father. While red zora were known to be involved to the murderer, the minstrel reasoned that it should not immediately condemn his superior. He knew that he knew little of the enemy, but he hoped the same was true for the enemy regarding _him_.

His latest letter hung heavy in his bag, useless without a vector to his employer. The thought occurred that he might find some purpose in the last letter if he was willing to discard its gains. The zora would be gone soon, as if he’d never found them. Unless he was being watched just then, no one should know. He could make the drop anyway at the compromised site, stake it out to find the interloper to his interloping. 

It wasn’t a horrible idea, precisely. It might have been the best possible, working with what he had. He made his drops once a week; perhaps they’d caught the pattern and had an idea when to watch for him. 

With his eyes casting about for enemies, the minstrel made a beeline for the hollowed tree they’d been using for their exchanges. He slid his letter into the compartment and then left as usual, taking a game path through the trees beside the creek. There was an old and sturdy willow, and once he’d established it as empty, he began to scale it. High in the branches he arranged for a view of the forest road and set to waiting for his hunter to come stumbling through.  
  
  


#

He leaves the area with a mind toward damage control. It feels woefully inadequate in the face of a murdered ally, but it is all he has to hold him. He breathes deep and quiet and makes himself focus.

The letters had been discrete, without oblique reference to the Zora nobility. While zora were known to be involved to the person who’d disposed of the agent sent for pick up, he reasoned that it should not immediately condemn his superior. He knew little of the enemy.

His latest letter hung heavy in his bag, useless without a vector to his employer. The Zora who usually retrieved the drops lay dead, and someone would look for them eventually. Perhaps even find the body and the letter, if he made a drop of the newest letter anyway at the compromised site. He paused, considering that.

It wasn’t a horrible idea, precisely. If the killer was watching the area they might know that something amiss had occurred, that he had found the body. They might have an idea when to watch for him. He made his drops once a week, perhaps they’d caught the pattern.

With his eyes casting about for enemies, the minstrel made a beeline for the dropsite. He slid his letter into the usual compartment and then left as if there was nothing amiss, taking a game path through the trees beside the creek. There was an old and sturdy willow, and once he’d established it was empty, he slipped into it himself to arrange for a view of the forest road and waited.  
  
  


#

Roots have overtaken the sky. They sprawl across it, creeping, searching - the dreamer isn’t sure why he thinks they’re roots, instead of vines or branches. 

Bits of light hang trapped in the plant matter. The sound of crows calling fills his ears, inviting him to join them for a meal. He follows the noise to the murder - many glittering eyes turn up to him briefly. Two of the crows hop apart. He edges into the space they’ve made and kneels, watching his bone-pale hands reach out and dig into the flesh of the Zora they have converged on. Has his skin always looked like this? The situation feels natural to him, seems wrong for reasons that are fuzzy to him then. 

The blood tastes good on his tongue, full and metallic and cool. The Zora stares up at the star spots and doesn’t see anything while the crows feast on their flesh.

“That used to be me,” A man’s voice says, curiously void of emotion. A hand lands on Link’s shoulder. It feels warm, though he isn’t sure why that seems off either. “And you shouldn’t be here. Are you dreaming?”

The dreamer casts his gaze up to seek the speaker: an apparition of the Zora they are consuming is behind him; gazing down at the tableau of his own body with a look of conflict on his face. 

His lips part to reveal a shark’s teeth, “I wasn’t meant to be there. I was running late.” He seems fixated by the sight of his own death stare. 

The dreamer tips his head back, waiting. He thinks to tell the Zora to look away, but when he opens his mouth a guttural croak is all he can summon. The Zora continues to look at the corpse.

“My sister asked me to go in her stead,” he said, “So she could train with the elders.”

The dreamer tries again to speak. He manages with a reedy, inhuman voice from the depths of his throat. “If you hadn’t come… it would have been her.”

The Zora nods, eyes fixed on the body. “It could have been. Maybe she wouldn’t have lost.” He doesn’t seem sure.

The dreamer licks the Zora’s blood from his fingers, and rises.

“You’re a Hylian,” The Zora says, turning to look him over. “Why are you gnawing at the bones of the dead, with these crows?”

The words send the dreamer’s gaze down to examine the backs of his bloody hands. “Is that what I am?” Bone-white, like porcelain, so thin and pale he can see the branches of veins and arteries stretched under his skin. Did he look like this before? Would he look like this if he turned his eyes away?

“Yes, I’m almost certain.” The Zora has to stoop to be level with the dreamer - he puts his curious face too close and peers at the dreamer with amber eyes, slit pupils blown wide in the twilight of the root-world. The dreamer stays very still for the inspection, and the Zora smiles. “Yes! Yes, you are most assuredly not a Zora, and you are not a Sheikah, so you must be a Hylian!”

“What… about Gerudo?” The dreamer asks, because the word means something, but he doesn’t remember what. The Zora’s look of happy triumph morphs to one of bafflement. 

“What is a Gerudo?”

“It’s- … nevermind.” The dreamer does not know how to begin to explain the images in his mind. “I don’t feel like a Hylian.”

“I don’t know how you’d feel like a Hylian, either,” The Zora admitted, “But you look like one.” He bent over to examine the dreamer again. “But I suppose, if you say you aren’t one, I’ll believe you.” He smiled, all sharp teeth. “After all, the prince of the Red Zora Kingdom can hardly be caught speaking to a Hylian!”

“… even as a ghost?” The dreamer asked him. Here, they were both ghosts. The Zora deflated.

“Well… I assume so. This is my first time being dead, so I’m a little blurry on the etiquette.” He muttered, lips pursing in a pout. 

The dreamer cocked his head. “I’ve never seen a red Zora.” He went back to cleaning the blood from his fingers, not precisely because he wanted to. It was more that he couldn’t help himself. Thankfully, the Zora did not seem to mind it. “Where do they come from?”

The zora puffed himself up, looking proud to be the relater of this information. “Why, from the seas of the south, of course!” He gave the dreamer an elegant bow and added, “We have traveled up the rivers and taken for our kingdom the waterways of the southern country, protecting them against the pollution of land folk.” His smile fell. “… I suspect I was a political killing. I was retrieving a message destined for the northern Domain when I was attacked by a Hylian. He wore no crest, but was trained to use a sword, and well at that. I suspect him a knight.” 

The dreamer blinked. “I was offered a knighthood.” He recalled, though the memory was hazy.

The Zora bristled. “The Kingdom of Hyrule offered you,” He responded, voice going tight with reserve. The dreamer quirked his lips in a smile and sucked the last bit of blood from under one fingernail.

“Yes. They’ll give them to anyone.”

He won a startled laugh for it. The Zora tipped his head to the side, “Then, you didn’t accept it.”

“I don’t like this country.” The dreamer admitted. “It’s full of lies and liars.”

The Zora rocked back on his feet and peered down the dreamer from his full height. He was head and shoulders taller, with a strong body and pale scars from battle training. “And what about you?”

The dreamer looked at his pale hands and then the Zora. “What about me?”

The Zora pointed one yellow claw at his chest. “Are you a liar,” He clarified, tipping his head back. His eyes glittered like a cat’s.

The dreamer shut his fist and let it fall to hang by his side. “I don’t remember what I am.” He said, “I remember the stars, and then the crows called me.” He looked down - the corpse was gone, just a splatter of blood on the ground to show where it had been. Even the bones had disappeared. “And then we ate. And I met you.” He paused, “Have I met you?”

The Zora took a moment to puzzle through that. “We know each other.” He decided after a moment. “Neither of us like liars. You like blood. You are dreaming. I liked a lot of things when I was living, but I’ll… tolerate being dead.” He considered it. “Was there anything else?”

The dreamer tried to summon a piece of information that seemed destined to elude him. “But we’re forgetting something, about knowing someone. Aren’t we?”

“Are we?” The Zora frowned down at him, crossing his arms and tapping one clawed finger against his chin repeatedly. “Oh… well, I’m not sure either… but it’s bothersome to know without knowing…” 

“If we know without knowing, don’t we just not know?” The dreamer responded, frustrated.

“No, it’s certainly distinct!” The Zora chomped on his thumbnail. “If we didn’t know what we didn’t know, it would just be ignorance! This is forgetting.”

“I don’t get the distinction,” The dreamer complained, and the Zora clucked his tongue at him.

“Well I’m certain it’s _there, _you just need to think about what makes it different, -… you… say.” The Zora brightened. “That’s it, isn’t it. I don’t have your _name!”_

The dreamer frowned at him. “Name?”

“You know, what others call you on the land.” The Zora explained with a patient smile and a wave. “Surely you have one!”

“No, I know what a - look, you haven’t given _yours.” _The dreamer stressed, leaving out for a moment that this _was _what had been prodding at him. Mostly. The other bit was that, he wasn’t sure precisely who he _was_ or what his name was, any more than he knew the same of the Zora he was speaking to. “I mean, that’s manners, isn’t it? To give before you get?”

The Zora blinked a few times. “Oh.” He scratched his cheek. “Oh, right. Sorry, I - hmm.” He cleared his throat. “I’ll try that again, if you’ll permit me.”

The dreamer nodded when the Zora kept staring. He was serious about requesting permission, it seemed.

“I,” The Zora gave him a flourishing bow, “Am Prince Sidon, second child and first son of King Dorephan of the red Zora! You… really don’t know me?”

“Never heard of you,” the dreamer admitted, pursing his lips at the way the zora slumped. 

“I thought my name would be whispered as a warning among Hylians by now…”

The dreamer found this somewhat dubious as a possiblity in any world, but especially one where the name would have to compete with Ganondorf for infamy. He kept quiet.

“… oh, perhaps you have never heard of me because you are also at an impasse with the Hylians, though…” The Zora - Sidon - straightened up again and held out his hand to the dreamer. “At any rate! What should I call you, my newest friend?”

The dreamer peered at his hand and searched himself for a name, something, anything. 

Memories he could half see passed through his mind. _“Fey thing, aren’t you,” _a blond man snickered in passing bits of poetry, and a woman’s voice called out to him while his blood ran cold, and he-  
was-

oh. 

of course he was.

“Link. My name is Link,” He said, words spilling out in a rush, morphing from the croak of a crow to the rasp of someone who didn’t favor their voice to speak. “Of Faron Woods,” He added, and took the Zora’s hand.

“Link, then.” Sidon pulled him in for a half hug that left him a little terrified, simply for making him feel so very _small_. “It is a pleasure to meet you! Only I am afraid we will not meet again a very long time.” He smiled at Link, “But speaking to you has been a most pleasant diversion from this field of destruction.”

Link looked around them. “Have you… been here long?” His stomach twisted unhappily at the reminder that he’d been eating this Zora’s flesh not long ago, before he’d learned his name. Before Link had recalled himself.

“Oh, a few days.” The Zora nodded. “No one here but myself and the crows. I wonder what it is I must be waiting for.” He looked around to see if Link had spotted something he hadn’t, or if something new had manifested during their talk. But there was nothing; his gaze returned to Link’s without hesitation. “Have you ever been dead before, Link?”

“I’m not sure,” Link said, because he didn’t want to lie. “I’ve dreamed of it.”

“Well, surely.” Sidon looked him up and down in a way that Link thought was probably good-natured. “But has it ever stuck?”

“Not yet.” Link crouched to touch the bloodstain Sidon’s body had left. “You didn’t kill each other, did you?”

“Ah. Well- what?” Sidon blinked, “Oh. No, my attacker escaped with his life, to my knowledge. If he has expired from the wounds I dealt him, I have not found him here!”

Link spent a brief moment wondering if Sidon were being punished with all this waiting alone in the field, but Sidon seemed happily oblivious to the possibility, and Link didn’t want to risk hurting his spirits by bringing it up. If that had nothing to do with the matter, then Link would be cruel for making the suggestion, and if it wasn’t… well, Sidon would lose hope in due time on his own then, wouldn’t he. No one could stay happy in purgatory for too long.

Perhaps out of listlessness, they began to walk through the field. 

“Was that really your body?” Link asked.

Sidon shook his head. “No, as far as I am aware, my body is with my people.” He said, “Failing that, it lays where I expired.”

The scenery from them stays at the same distance as when they started. The field has nothing growing in it. On the horizon Link sees a tree reaching down from the roots that weave across the sky, and well beyond that, the impressions of mountains. “What will they do?”

Sidon sighed. “Well- I expect they’ll mourn me.” He said, “My sister - Mipha… she is set to become queen, but that was as before. She is the elder. Say, that tree - it’s curious, isn’t it?”

Link looked at it again. “Yeah. ‘s… sorta evil looking.”

Dead and gnarled with branches like claws. Sidon nodded emphatically. “It is! It really is, I don’t like it a bit.”

They continued walking towards it: it stayed equidistant. Link frowned at its lack of compliance. “Well… I doubt we’ll get near it, anyway…”

“Hrmm, seems not.” Sidon seemed happy to accept that and put it out of mind. “What will you do when you wake up, Link?”

The night before came back to Link in a rush. A stalfos had entered the village and he’d fought it - his angle twinged in memory of him making a poor landing. “I - shit. I have to leave.”

Sidon cast him an alarmed look, and Link added, “Not the dream. My home. A monster followed me to my home.”

“And you have to leave because of that?” Sidon asked, brow ridges arching. 

“I live in the Kokiri village,” Link reached up to scrub a hand at his hair, hissing. “I twisted my ankle and went to sleep, but I - it was after me. Stalfos don’t attack Kokiri…”

Sidon’s mouth formed into a little ‘o’. He nodded for Link to continue. 

“Have you seen a Kokiri?” Link peered up at Sidon, who shook his head. “Well, they’re tiny. Like-” He held out a hand to indicate half his own height. Sidon boggled. 

“They’re the size of children?”

“Well, they are children - sort of - children hundreds of years older than we are.” Link explained with a grimace. “They’re a sort of fairy.”

That seemed to clear up much of Sidon’s shock on the matter, to make way for incredulity. “Hundreds of years older than Zora?”

Link wasn’t sure why that was odd. “… yes?”

“I’m past a century, myself,” Sidon set a hand on his chest, then startled when Link _tripped _(he’d been gawking). Sidon snapped his hands out and steadied him. “Careful!”

“Don’t tell me things like that when I’m walking, then.” Link muttered without venom, finding his feet. After a moment, Sidon released him.

“But it’s true.” He eyed Link, “How old are you?”

“Eh… eighteen or so.” Link guesstimated. It had never been important before running around Hyrule, and the Deku trees had difficulty remembering in units smaller than decades. The Great Deku Tree had usually settled for telling Link ‘you’re one’ when he had been alive, and it was eight years after the fact now.

Sidon sputtered a laugh. “You’re a baby.” His half-parted lips quirked up in delight, his eyes sparkled, and it- well, to Link it looked like good humor. The way Saria laughed at him sometimes.

“I’m an adult,” Link said, even if he didn’t feel like it. Sidon shrugged. 

“To a Zora you would be scarcely more than a toddler.” 

Link tried to imagine that. It sounded like an obscenely long time for something that could mature to go about it. “… why?”

“Oh,” Sidon considered it, “Well, we grow very large. And that takes a long time to manage. A coral reef is not made in a year, or even a hundred! … why ever are you looking at me like that, Link?”

So Link was forced to admit ignorance of what a coral reef _was, _and Sidon became thoroughly distracted by the task of describing both the majesty and growth of one, and neither of them noticed when the static world shifted under their feet. 

“… it sounds like a forest,” Link decided. Sidon shrugged with a little rueful smile on his lips. 

“I suppose it would to someone who has never seen the sea. Which is an awful oversight, and you really must hurry south to remedy it before you come back here and join me for good.”

“Eugh. Can you not talk about my mortality?”

Sidon examined him. “It’s a fact, isn’t it?”

“I’ve confronted it enough in the last two years of my memory. I think I’ve earned the right to denial now.”

Sidon probably would’ve asked about the odd phrasing, if a crow hadn’t gave a noisy scolding _CAW! _and flew down between them. Sidon leapt back wide-eyed, probably expecting an attack and trying to avoid it. Link was resigned to being pecked, though, so he didn’t bother.

The bedraggled crow settled on his shoulder and preened. It scolded Sidon - thankfully by chattering, and not by pecking him - when he took a step closer to Link.

Sidon looked incredulous and a little alarmed. “Link, that bird… would you like me to remove it?”

“No,” Link reached up to pat the crow a few times, sighing when its claws dug into his skin. _Just _his skin. Link noticed the breeze for the first time. “It’s, uh, I got it. … Sidon?”

“Yes?” The maybe-prince, definitely dead Zora blinked at him in inquiry. He probably would have risk getting his face pecked if Link asked for his help, which was very good of him. He seemed like he was authentic in his kindness. 

Link knew what he had to do once he’d gotten a handle on the situation. “Have… I been naked this whole time?” He asked, looking around for something he could use to cover himself. He paused at the sight of the tree from the distance reaching down to touch the earth beside them, impossibly huge around the trunk with branches that reached out for miles. They were standing under the mishapen arch of one such branch, which seemed blissfully unaware that it was growing upside down into the earth. 

“… I had assumed you knew,” Sidon said, his expression gaining a cast of apology. 

“No. I, um, I usually wear clothes.” Link tried to focus on the tree, and not that he’d been strolling around bloody and _nude. _It wasn’t too hard. The not-knowing was more embarrassing than the exposure, honestly. “When did we get next to the tree?”

“We-” Sidon looked. “Oh! I have no idea.” He marvelled at it, eyes bright. “I have been trying to reach this for days! And we walked forever without… oh… perhaps that was the problem!”

Link arched his brows, and Sidon clarified, “Trying to reach it. We moved when we stopped looking, didn’t we?”

He may have been on to something. Link thought vaguely of an expression about watched pots. They climbed onto a branch where it touched the ground and started making their way up, which seemed to be more acceptable to the landscape than trying to cross it with a goal in mind had been. 

Sidon wasn’t very good at climbing, but then neither was Link. “Aren’t Kokiri forest spirits?” Sidon needled the next time Link slipped and fell back, and he’d had to snatch him out of the air.

Link huffed. “The village only has three trees, and you can’t climb _any _of them.” He muttered, “The rest are too tall to try. Alright?”

Sidon set him down with a chuckle. “This is the best news I’ve gotten since you fell down here with the crows!” He nudged Link’s back with his hand. “Go on, try again. I’ll catch you if you fall - not that I think you will! Once is plenty for you to learn, isn’t it?”

Link shook his head and started the process of scrambling up all over. This time - Sidon was right - he knew what he could reach and what he couldn’t, and what made the best grip. He perched on the next bit of flat and waited. Sidon climbed up after him, slower and more careful - and… using the same hand and foot holds that Link had, wherever he could.

He’d been watching, then, not just waiting. A bit of approval warmed Link; that was very practical of Sidon.

The crow that had been clinging to his shoulder hissed at Sidon, who waved it away. It didn’t leave. “You have a very angry pet.”

“It’s not a pet.” Link eyed the bird. “More like, um.” What could he even compare this to. “You know how kids are?”

Sidon eyed him. “Of course. There are always little ones underfoot at home.”

Link nodded. “It’s like a little, little kid.” He said, rubbing the crow under the beak with his finger. Sidon watched him wide eyed, and clearly wasn’t following where Link wanted to lead him. Link tried anyway. “With a stiletto - you know, those long, thin daggers. And whenever you do something they don’t like, they jab you with it.”

Sidon blinked a few times. “That… sounds horrible.”

Link nodded. “It is.”

The crow on Link’s shoulder cawed, scolding both of them, and released the bloody patch of skin it had been inhabiting for the last hour to fly away; it disappeared into a hollow at the juncture where the branch they were scaling met the trunk of the tree. 

Sidon crouched beside him and eyed it. “Do you suppose anything of value is inside?”

Link looked too, but he could make out only shadows. He shrugged. “Define value.”

Sidon’s eyes glittered. “… anything entertaining,” He said without malice. “There’s not much else, when you’re dead.”

Link supposed that was fair. “About that.” They began climbing again. “Where _exactly _did you die?”

“Mmm.” Sidon clucked and moved ahead of Link. “Well, that would be a road in South Hyrule. Weiss, the land-dwellers call it.” Sidon paused to help Link over a section that he could scale, but Link could not. They clasped hands and Sidon hauled him up, then waited until Link was climbing on his own again to resume. “As I said, I was retrieving a letter to send to the Domain.”

“To Ruto?” Link asked. 

Sidon chuffed in surprise. “Yes, to the Lady Ruto. You know of her?”

“We’ve met. I, um.” Near the top of his climb, Link gambled and jumped for the platform that would lead into the hollow. “_Nnnf!” _He clamored up, “I sorta helped her clear out a parasite in, ah. Lord Jabu Jabu.” He twisted back to watch Sidon, and offer help if he could. He could hear his crow-friend chattering away in the dark of the hollow. 

Sidon pulled himself up without needing a hand. His lack of grace in the tree was apparently balanced by his unfair advantage of height. “That was _you? _Well, I’d heard it was a fairy-child’s doing, but…” He eyed Link. “You’re too mature to be a Kokiri. So what manner of fairy are you, then?”

“Dunno.” Link stood up, brushing his legs off. After a moment Sidon mirrored him. They both turned to face the open hollow. “Sidon?”

“Yes, Link?”

“If I remember this when I wake up… I’m gonna find the person that killed you. Okay?”

Sidon let out a small, delighted laugh. “That’s very kind of you. But if you’re taking last requests, I would much rather you find out what is poisoning the water of my home, and stop it.”

“I will.” Link said. “… but I’m here now, and I’m gonna go through the door. Are you gonna come with me?”

Sidon smiled down at him. “What sort of friend would I be if I didn’t?”

Eyes straining for an idea of what they’d find inside, they walked into the darkness. 

#

The darkness of the doorway receded with the abruptness of an illusory wall, once one had passed through it. Sidon and Link both stopped to look around them with wide eyes.

The hollow of the tree stretched out, perhaps encompassing all of the trunk to the narrowest sliver of bark. There were many crows inside, and many Sheikah; all of whom turn to stare at Link and Sidon with glittering red eyes.

Piles of trinkets are scattered here and there, some bearing resemblance to the piece Link’s crow had delivered onto his pillow in the waking world.

A massive crow is in the center of the room; it turns its head to regard them with an almost languid quality, as if it had just woken from deep sleep.

At the corner of his eye Link notices that Sidon has set his jaw, and his body has loosened even as his fists clench: preparing to a fight. 

Link’s crow flew down from the ceiling, chattering. It circled the monster-crow once and then goes flying back to Link.

The monster-crow rises off the floor, and - Link would amend his label to _monster_. It’s tall, nearing twice Sidon’s height, and a heavy mantle of feathers drapes down its back in a cape. Its front is swathed in black fabric - Link sees grey arms- emerging in flashes as it moves.

It shuffles toward them with the ponderous gait of a deadhand. The magelight of the room seems to dim.

On the crow’s next pass around it, the monster lifts its right arm. Link tensed, not sure what good lunging could do- and the crow settled on the scaled-and-taloned arm of the beast, crooning to it the way it usually croons at _Link._

_Traitor, _he thought, because it was either that or _idiot_. 

“Sidon,” A deep and echoing voice says, and Link realized with sinking dread that it’s coming from the monster. “You’ve made it.”

Sidon balked. Link doesn’t blame him. “I apologize, was I _expected?_”

“No,” The monster sounds bitter, “You weren’t.” It raises its unoccupied arm and uses one talon to groom Link’s crow, which seems perfectly happy to accept the attention. “I’m sorry if Sigi was a handful. I see they’ve brought back more than you, Prince of the Red Zora.”

The statement left spirals of discomfort swirling through Link. He eyed the crow on the monster’s arm. _Definitely ‘traitor’. _

“I asked that he bring your soul all the way here,” The monster said, with something approaching apology in its voice and without a blink of its cloudy eyes or a twitch of its dull looking beak, “I did not anticipate it being waylaid, but then, Prince Sidon was not supposed to die this week.” He sighed, “Or this century. Things have been - out of sorts.”

Link’s eyes widened. “I’m sorry. Do you mean to imply you know when people _should_ be dying?”

The monster cocked its crow-head to the side, like a corpse being used as a puppet. “Well- yes, of course. I’m -” It waves its talons around like it’s physically grasping for words, “Er. I’m in charge of it, you could say.”

Link peered at it. “… You’re joking.”

It wiggles the talons at him. “Yes, haha, I am quite the merrymaker.” The crow stares at them without blinking or twitching. It looks… wrong. “No.” Sounds wrong. Gravelly and echoing. “Really, death is my purpose.”

Sidon was more diplomatic than Link by a narrow margin, but Link didn’t think that deserved an award. There were leagues more people more diplomatic than him; most of the ones he’d met qualified. 

“I’m very sorry, sir,” Sidon said, adopting a sweet voice that oozed apology. Link wondered if Zelda could talk like that, and recalled that she could, but that it hadn’t worked very well on him when he’d been furious at her. “But we don’t know what to call you or what to think of this. I cannot speak for Link, but the Zora assuredly believe in an afterlife that is… much different to this.”

The monster looks around them. “You’re mistaken. You were not meant to come here at all, but the matter of your death- I.” The crow sighs, “One of my children called for you to be collected, and so the crows came and you were brought here, where the crows fly. This is not- well, it is a part of the afterlife. But not the part that you’ll be staying in.”

Sidon and Link both stared at the monster, Sidon with a polite tilt of his head to indicate he was listening, Link with the sort of nearly-dead blandness he treated all bullshit with. 

“This is my nest, as it were. I asked Sigi to bring Link here.” It pauses. “Not that your being here is a problem, but I think you’ll be quite bored without water to swim in. Yes?”

Sidon shifted slightly, trying to move in front of Link. It was a novel thing to witness for the little hero: the last time someone had tried to shield him and could actually sort of manage had been in Kakariko, and they’d been thrown into a wall for the trouble. “That does sound nice, but I’ll have to pass for now.” Sidon flashed their host a rueful smile. “Might I ask what purpose you needed ‘Sigi’ to escort Link here for?”

The monster shifts. “Nothing untoward.” It assures them, without much fruit to bear for the effort. “I had hoped to speak with him about the recent deaths. I- perhaps it would be better if I showed you. Pray permit me?”

Sidon frowned - he slanted a glance back at Link, who picked up on it. He nodded his head and moved a half step forward, Sidon with him. Link raised his chin to look the monster in the face and agreed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll be shocked if you don't know who the minstrel is. If you don't know who the zora is, well, I didn't know until the next chapter either.


	8. Marked Guilty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The minstrel pretends he's a decent spy with decent luck. On the way back to a bolthole to sleep is when he finds something of use, though; meanwhile, the knight captain has some concerns. And plans. And ideas - terrible, strange ideas.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been waiting in excitement to post this chapter. Editing it was a monster task though, as it's about 10k.  
For reasons unclear to me, my documents have random spaces added to them when copy pasted into the editor, so I'm going back through and finding those after posting. Really sorry for the ones I miss!  
Also I have random present tense bits in here, probably, I tried to edit them all out but... (throws hands up) sorry folks because I am sure I missed some of those too. C'est la vie.  
(There is one section where the present tense is intentional and left in, and it's because I felt like it added to the scene in question.)  
Warnings for the minstrel assuming the worst of everyone around him.

Two weeks passed with no luck finding his contact’s killer. The minstrel had spent them camping near the drop site, mostly in the treetop eating through what was left of his supplies and drinking water from rain traps.

He’d learned more about the comings and goings of Weiss, so while he was… frustrated, it wasn’t a total loss. For one, he’d determined that the Duke was indeed still in the city; an envoy from Castletown had arrived at the main gates that night.

They’d been over a mile still from the city when it grew too dark for travel and had set up to camp not far from his base of operations, so he’d slipped down to spy… and to consider whether it was worth asking that they share food for information: his stocks _were _low, and old unspiced samosas seemed more like a punishment than a meal anyway.

The camp was noisy and relaxed when he approached: mostly burly Hylians, likely from the Laketower region but not Weiss itself. They were dressed in functional clothes of plain color and good construction - aside from the home-done repairs… Not merchants. Or at least, not ones who’d done well for themselves in a long time.

They spoke like country folk - he raised a hand to hail them and had gotten many cheerful greetings back. One of them invited him to eat _in exchange for some music, _which he’d been happy to oblige.

It felt good to play his lyre, and for more than an audience of one this time. Even if he suspected he was sitting amongst part-time bandits. Or had possibly been mistaken for a sex worker again, albeit one they were pleased enough to hear music from. (Well. In Kakariko, the people plying that sort of trade were educated and could entertain with their words as well as bodies - but this was not Kakariko. So perhaps they really did accept him at face value as a musician?) 

There was one larger tent to the camp, and while he kept it in mind no one emerged until the men were making a stew over the fire. Only then did a blond head pop out of the sheet covering the opening.

“Food?" A young woman, mostly without makeup, asked with a hopeful air about her. She caught sight of the minstrel and frowned. "Ehh - Gozo, you didn’t mention a guest!”

The minstrel looked up and properly met the eye of what he assumed to be his host; a Hylian stared back, dark eyes outlined with kohl and her hair piled in a bun atop her head. She looked familiar, though he could not place her precisely.

“You?” She balked, then gave him a second - almost panicked - look-over. Her gaze focused on his mouth. Probably the scar there. That was where most people looked longest, if his glamour was in place. “… wait… no. You’re not- er, sorry. Got mixed up.”

He gazed at her, doing his best to project serenity. “Please don’t worry yourself. You have done me no insult.” He inclined his head, adjusted his lyre, and resumed playing a quiet melody. “I hope my presence is not a burden, Miss?”

That he didn’t know whom he was talking to was _annoying. _She looked like she had royal blood - her eyes had the same angle to them as the princess’s, though the color was wrong and her nose was too small to be from the main line… Agh. It was going to bother him until he ferreted it out!

She emerged from the tent and stood up - not very tall, but with strong shoulders and hands he suspected were calloused from the grip of a sword. Little pale slashes decorated her bare arms. She was dressed simply, if with a little more flash than her companions. His eye was drawn to the brilliant crimson sash on her waist. _Announcing your wealth in the post-war? That’s a little gauche._

Tan. Simply clothed. Wearing expensive dyes openly. That made his coming up blank worse. He didn’t know anyone bold enough to pull that when there was a power imbalance in Castletown, and at least half of it _did not approve _of flaunting power while the kingdom rebuilt. It was his job to know this sort of thing- had been. Had been his job. Not anymore.

It was hard to remember that.

“The name is Tetra.” The woman said, doing him few favors. “Say, you take requests?”

He smiled and leaned back, nodding encouragement. “Whatever you’d like to hear.”

#

With dinner came booze, and looser tongues. Tetra, unfortunately, made the choice to join the minstrel in sobriety.

“A captain’s gotta keep an eye on her crew.” She said, eyeing the uproarious and guffawing men with the sort of covetousness he associated with dragons guarding a hoard. 

“I’ve never heard of such a title in the nobility.” He murmured.

She gave him a sharp look. Her fingers twitched though she did not draw a weapon or call her men. 

The minstrel kept his gaze focused on the strings he was plucking and his expression demure. A lullaby seemed appropriate for their sleepy company and the late hour.

At the corner of his eye he watched her.

She stiffened a few notes into the song, and turned her stare on him with new wariness. It was just as well. He’d gone unfed too long, and his glamour would be faltering soon - if not tonight, then surely by the morning.

_Not bandits, _he decided, or if they were, they had a runaway heiress staking claims on them.

“You can’t be who you look like,” Tetra said with certainty in her voice, though her appearance of confidence was faltering.

A nonsensical statement deserved one in return. “I can be, if I look like myself.” The minstrel made to care for his lute so he could put it away; the time for playing seemed to have ended with his lullaby. “Who do you serve, miss Tetra?”

“Is this some fucked up loyalty test?" She spat, and bristled, "Cause I’m not interested.”

The minstrel shook his head. “No - well, yes, but not the sort where the wrong answer ends in heads rolling.”

She did not looked comforted.

The minstrel added, “If you cannot tell me what I need to hear, I will simply leave as I arrived.”

Tetra curled her lip, eyes flashing with rage. Her fists clenched. She did not, he was pleased to note, grab a knife with which to menace him for the indiscretion.

“Hurry up and ask it, then. Whatever it is.” Tetra grumbled. One of the men of the camp stirred, rolled over, and seemed to fall asleep again.

The minstrel blinked at his one aware host. “As before. Who do you serve?” He inclined his head to her. 

Tetra turned her nose up. “I serve myself first. And I guess these guys second.” She swept her gaze over the camp. “… maybe Hyrule, third.”

The minstrel shrugged; self interest kept one alive. Not a noble answer, but one he could probably trust. “Why are you here?”

“Cause I got a letter askin’.” Tetra crossed her ankles and sniffed. “Offered my title back, with interest, if I could pull off what was bein’ asked - befriend the guy in charge here. Like I gotta figure you’re doin.” She eyed him. “You don’t work for him.”

Well, no. Even if he wasn’t wearing his retainer’s symbol at this moment.

“He don’t employ your type.” Tetra added, as if he weren't very well aware of the fact. Perhaps she was being helpful.

“No. Weiss hasn’t for almost twenty years.” The minstrel agreed, pushing hair away from his good eye. “And as I understood it the circumstances were… unusual.” He wanted to ask about the title, though he wasn’t sure he was yet willing to. 

“So who are you working for?” Tetra eyed him. 

The minstrel smiled back and shrugged his shoulders. “Myself, first.” His eyes widened a bit. “It’s very new, but I like it.”

“… and - second?” Tetra didn’t seem terribly amused, but she did seem to appreciate the honesty. It _really bothered _him, not being sure who she was.

“The sages.” The minstrel said, “At least, one of them. Sometimes another. We aren’t talking right now.”

Tetra did not seem to know how to handle it. She frowned at him in silence.

“Say, you never did mention your surname.” He gave her a sunny smile.

“Darya.” Tetra said, and the minstrel perked. 

“You’re Seliga’s daughter!… I heard you’d run off to try and become a bandit queen.” He eyed her. 

“Tried nothing!” Tetra bristled at him and clenched her fists, and her teeth. “Who’s spreading rumors about me!?”

“Eh, it’s not really important, but…” The minstrel told her, because causing trouble for people he could no longer torment himself seemed perfectly reasonable always, and especially just then. “But you must promise not to mention me.”

“Why would I bother bringing up some no-name minstrel before I duel them?" Tetra's eyes flashed in the firelight, "I’ll do it just for the hell of it!”

They were both startled by one of her men rolling over and _shouting, _“Go boss!”

And another, “Yeah! Thass' our boss!”

They looked, but the men who had cheered were really no more awake than the ones snoring… 

The minstrel cleared his throat. “About that. We’ve cleared up our misunderstandings, I think… do you want to know what I know?”

“I mean, anything useful.” Tetra shrugged. “If we’re on the same side.”

“Hmm. I’d say so.” The minstrel leaned forward. “I’m just not interested in helping anyone working for- … well.” He wiggled a hand. “I’ve cleaned up enough of his messes. Haven’t you?”

Lady Seliga Darya of East Necluda had lost her life defending Lurelin in the Seven Year War. Her daughter had escaped the castle there on a ship rather than surrender. It had made the news for both sides of the conflict; a sign of hope for loyalists, and an object of scorn for traitors.

What could one little girl do against the might of a dark army? as it turned out, a lot. Children grew up. They remembered wrongs, and they were _angry. _

_We’ll have to be careful. It’s pathetic knowing children had to save the country,_ he mused, _but what if the next tyrant to come along takes the threat they pose seriously?_

Sending Seliga's daughter… ‘Tetra’… seemed- a bit risky to him, but he could see the logic behind the choice as well. She would know Weiss better from proximity than someone who’d never been far from Castletown, the temperatures shouldn’t bother her, and she wouldn’t sound so out of place to the locals.

And, he thought with some dryness, she wouldn’t have to worry about sunburn if she moved around at midday outside of tree-cover.

Perhaps most importantly, Tetra had no reason to be loyal to the king of Hyrule when he’d let the wolfos in. So she should have no attachment to his family in swampy little Laketower either.

The minstrel leaned closer. “I heard the Duke was out of town, but if you’re coming through the gates then I expect that was a lie…”

“Oh, he’s home. And as I hear it,” Tetra’s eyes glittered, “The duke isn’t a ruler as much as a figurehead, but…”

They spent a few hours gossiping. For work. It was definitely work and no one could prove otherwise.

#

There was a Gerudo caravan idling outside of Weiss. Its presence came to to the minstrel as an honest surprise; he didn’t think they bothered traveling so far south, especially with it being such a bitterly divided place.

He passed by at noon without making a purchase, heading for the solid section of wall near the merchant district to wait out until nightfall.

Once it was dark enough that his clothes were concealed against the brown stones and green vines that protected Bremen, he climbed.

It was late in the evening or early in the morning - he wasn't sure - when he slipped down the whole section of wall, well across town from the crumbling bit cordoned off by guards.

There were stars overhead peeking out behind hazy clouds. The moon was a narrow sliver in waning and afforded little light to the few people still on the streets. There is no one out on good business after midnight, and the people the minstrel passed knew it as well as he did. They huddled in their cloaks and hurried past, eyes down, lips tight. 

A few days prior rain seemed to blanket the region, and made it impossible to slip back into the city by any method but the gates. The minstrel had spent his time staking out the trees nearby those gates in the hopes of catching a lead, resenting that any time spent at one could result in someone slipping through the other without his notice. It really would have been easier if he had an extra set of eyes, but there was no good way of accomplishing that unless he worked on turning some people into assets.

The guards had patrolled the same areas, and if anyone did make their way out it was through a path that the minstrel hadn’t found. He was sure that there must be some secret tunnels for evacuations in war time, but they were unknown to him. Of course, if such a thing were the reason he’d been luckless and the whole mess would be well above his pay-grade; a ranking guard or noble would be at the least involved, if not directly responsible. 

He briefly imagined the princess’s face if he could only share his suspicions. _Even after a war with the Gerudo, and so many deaths, someone charged with protecting your subjects instead is trying to build a war on their bodies._

Nayru help him, but he hated other people. 

The minstrel entertained himself, as he entered the border of the inner city, with the notion of asking Princess Ruto if she wouldn’t consider assigning him next to a dark storage room for the next few years. Or perhaps the ice cavern. He thought that very few of his issues with sentient beings couldn’t be solved with distance and time, enough to dull his memories of how exceptionally awful they could be.

The dirt road ended and he hit a path of cobblestone, old and slick with runoff from the hilltop neighborhood. There were a few streetlights out here. Most were even lit, candles flicking in glass cages and casting weird shadows on the standing water in the divots of the street. The minstrel pulled a mask from the pouch on his waist and covered his face. At this hour, after all, no one reputable had business. 

The next lamp was out, its candle burnt to nothing. The soft drip of the gutters almost concealed the sound of someone ahead of him out walking, rendered invisible by a towering hedge and a short iron fence. The minstrel slowed his steps and rounded corner of the block, eyes seeking the source of the noise. His gaze caught on a flash of color - a scarf pulled by the breeze, coiled around the neck of a Hylian with… hmm. A ponytail.

Perhaps there was another traveling musician in Bremen, he thought. Or maybe a Gerudo. Or, maybe the Knight Captain of Weiss had some disreputable errands he wanted to be out of sight for.

The minstrel considered following him, but he wasn’t here to investigate the captain. Being out late wasn’t illegal, just damn risky and sketchy besides. 

He turned right down the next alley, intending on circumventing the captain entirely: he didn’t want to discuss why he was out late, either. 

The path he’d picked, a narrow avenue between two towering brick houses, was dark enough to conceal all manner of demons. The minstrel tucked his hands under his cloak and pressed them against his sides for warmth.

His breath, fogging the air past his mask, was one of the only things he could see before the scarce-lit alley mouth.

The path should drop him off between the fenced backyards of two fine houses, or perhaps at a dead end. The walls in Bremen had plenty of elements he could use to travel vertically, so he didn’t concern himself much with what the path would open up to. 

But he really should have.

The _smell _of it hits him before he is even conscious of something being off. Copper and piss, the rough exhale of someone coming down from hard work. A sort of wet _squelch _over the soft noise of boots shifting in puddles. The minstrel stops in the alley mouth. There’s a man crouching over a pile of trash with something in his hand. There isn’t much detail to be made out from the dim moonlight. 

The minstrel drops to a crouch before he has properly registered that the trash underneath the stranger is nothing inanimate, or it hadn’t been the hour before. 

The smell of blood seems to coat his throat, though he’s had nothing to drink - his teeth ache, and his mouth feels dry. He holds his breath to watch.

The stranger straightens up, drawing a coil of wiry rope away from the trash. They look around, down the alley where the minstrel hides, eyes seeking interlopers. They stare too long - the minstrel feels his heart pounding in his ears - before looking down, and tucking the coiled rope into their belt. Their clothes were some dark material, not quite black - it was someone seeking to stay out of sight like they were trained to, the minstrel realized unhappily. 

They turned to the side- the moonlight caught on the scabbard hanging from their hip and glittered there, calling his eye with the venomous allure of a siren. 

Death with every minute spreads further, filling the alley with its suffocating stench. He wonders if the body is cold yet. His fingers twitch. 

The blood smells like a Hylian’s, though he couldn’t explain how he knew that if pressed. His stomach turned and ached. A meal turned sour by death and made taboo. _Who are you to spill blood?_ He wondered with his eyes focused on the stranger. It was years since he’d touched scripture, but the lines appear in his mind without prompting.

_To murder is an abomination, unless you seek to defend the life of yourself or others. To feed from a corpse, unless you yourself will starve by the process, is to sever yourself from the embrace of the Gods… _

_For who are you to cull from the herd, and to seek to make judgment where Destruction has not brushed his wings? Murderers will walk the earth until the end of days, and be reborn as Demons. _

He watches the man circle the alley, hauling away pieces of the roughly dismembered corpse. The minstrel wants to shut his eyes and make a prayer, but he cannot risk looking elsewhere now. 

Crows don’t come out at night, anyway. Every window in the city would light up from the noise of a descending flock.

… actually… He rather likes that idea. He folds his hands, eyes open, and begins to whisper.

The man circling the alley stops and cants his head to the side to listen. 

_**Another**_ _Hylian, _the minstrel thinks, whispering the words of his prayer as quiet as he can manage - they still drop like stones in the gloomy quiet. _Murderer._

The knife slides out of the murderer's sheath. Moonlight plays over pitted iron. _The ears that hear the gods, _the minstrel thinks as he stands. The Hylian faces him now, and though the minstrel knows he cannot be seen he is certainly _known_.

There is no point whispering anymore. He finishes the prayer in a soft voice anyway; it is the sort that either needs to be whispered or screamed. He issues it as a challenge, a condemnation for a fellow killer. “… and descend now for this soul, destined for the embrace of the earth, and for this sinner, who has cursed himself to roam the roads _until the end of days_.”

The murderer rushes towards him without a word uttered, and the minstrel turns and _runs. _

#

Overhead, a flock of crows fly screaming. 

Between the careless stars and the cold earth the world was throwing itself into chaos. Through the midst of that bedlam rushed a minstrel with a mask concealing a grin touched with madness. 

Windows were lighting up down the block. He felt good about how the evening was going, even as he was trying to lay a trap on the fly for a killer. 

He made a right out of the alley, slowing just until he could hear the Hylian’s boots pounding the earth in pursuit. Left - the way he’d come from before he’d tried to make his detour and found if not _the _killer then _a _killer - someone shouted for him to stop. The Hylian skidded out of the alley in pursuit behind him. 

Some but not all of the crows have descended on them by now, the minstrel calculated. He raced uphill toward a block of houses belonging to the families of knights. It’s a gamble to go dashing in front of them, but preferable to attacking someone himself when he is an unregistered agent of a foreign noble. Not to mention, he thinks, that he is out here alone, no back up to be had.

Better to let the security of Weiss do their damn jobs instead of chasing after foreigners all day.

He has several pursuers now, though he isn’t sure if they’re focused on him or the murderer chasing him. But he is sure that the murderer is still in pursuit; the smell of blood is heavy on the wind blowing against his back.

The hillside is steep - his tabi barely grip the slick cobblestones - there is a mansion in the distance that’s fallen in disrepair that he means to aim for.

He spots a man with a ponytail - the knight captain is standing at the top of the hill carrying a paper bag and paying no mind to anything. He is standing in front of a low fence rimmed by wild bushes, the place the minstrel means to carry himself. 

There’s a sharp whistling near the minstrel’s ear. A rock struck the pavement just ahead of him and a shout carried up the hill, along with the beating of wings and the pounding of feet and the screams of many crows. He rushed forward in a bid for the fence. 

Sir Voss turned his head and his eyes widened. The minstrel looked back a moment before he kicks off of the ground, twists in the air, feels the scrape of vines against his back - he clears the fence and hedges just barely, hits the earth with a damp _thump_. 

The grass is cold and wet. Thorns are stabbing him.

He shuts his eyes and says another prayer, this one for himself.

#

It was well past the witching hour, and normally he would be home, but there had been several matters in the court that required his attention. Aldhard had found himself running late from that. Afterwards he’d run out of town, the opposite direction of his house to the crossroads between the Gerudo Desert and Faron Woods to catch the caravan, as he knew tonight was the last night it would be stopped in Weiss. He did not regret it, but his growling stomach had Opinions about his priorities, and he was walking home at some ungodly hour with his nose tucked into a scarf his neighbor had (thoughtfully?) knitted him. He had dozens, and Weiss was only really cold a few weeks of the year, but she was a little old woman and felt the chill more acutely than he could imagine. 

For a place that rivaled the desert for warm days, he thought, Weiss certainly became miserable as the year wound to its end. 

There were few people out at this hour - most that passed him gave him a wide berth due to the sword and shield he carried - and he was thinking more about how long ago supper had been than much else. 

Maybe, Aldhard thought, he could sweet talk the knitting neighbor into feeding him a bowl of whatever she had left over for some petty chore she wanted doing. _If _she was even awake. Failing that… well, he was pretty sure he had some fruit left in the pantry from his last trip to the market…

He checked his bag out of habit - the contents were still inside, of course, exactly as he left them.

He was so focused on them, actually, that he almost didn’t notice the patter of feet before there was a running man nigh on top of him. Aldhard’s eyes shot wide as he leapt out of the way. He caught an equally startled look as the half-masked man went hurtling by, and… leapt over the rose bushes that made a hedge around the old Rosenthal Manor House.

Aldhard blinked a few times and tried to reconcile the late hour, the appearance of what seemed to him to surely be a Sheikah, and the noise of guards running up the hill and shouting. And the chattering of… birds?

What precisely had he walked into by being out so late? He looked into the yard, but the Sheikah was out of sight and quiet as the grave. Then he turned back to what by all appearances was a herd of helmasaurs rampaging up the path towards him, followed apparently by every offended avian in the known world.

Upon closer inspection, it was something even less pleasant. “Ah. Good evening.” He called, spotting the white tabards of Bremen’s guards first. No word yet on why he heard a racket of birds (and saw a swarm that he was, in fact, pretty sure was the source of that racket). 

“Knight-Captain!”

Aldhard turned completely to face the herd of not-helmasaurs. 

“Good evening.” He eyed each of them in turn, gaze lingering on the disheveled appearance of the man in front. Aldhard was used to the guards looking like they were collected from a tavern and stuffed into the Duke’s livery, but their appearance tonight struck a new low. They watched him with bright eyes and tense shoulders, clutching their spears as lifelines; impatient as their master, who was regarding at Aldhard as if he were a truly hideous toad sitting on the middle of his dining room table. Aldhard made sure to take his time examining them. 

“Basil. What has you out so late?” _I suppose I know what that Sheikah was running from, _he thought. 

“We seek a murderer,” Basil looked around the street, then leaned to the side to see behind Aldhard as if the man was concealed there.

Aldhard arched a brow. The screams of birds carried nearer to them on the wind.

_Well, _Aldhard considered, concerned but not worried, _he wouldn’t be wrong. There _is_ someone behind me. _It was just that he was also behind some bushes and playing dead.

The cacophony of birds was ever louder, and rather distracting. It sounded almost like - crows?

He glanced up. A swarming mass of black was descending like the wrath of Din. He should probably run, but he was transfixed. And anyway, they didn’t seem interested in _him _at the moment. 

Basil opened his mouth, in all likelihood losing his patience. The crows struck. 

“Sir Basil!”

“Sir Lewenhart!”

The guards struggled to defend Basil from the vicious scolding that the freak murder of crows was determined to inflict on him.

Aldhard stared; he'd seen cuccos swarm a man before, but never crows. It was new and rather fascinating, if horrible. Like something out of a pulp novel. He really couldn't look away. 

He made no move to help - even if he had any interest in being savaged, the crows were now visiting their kindness on the guards for interrupting and Aldhard would hate to burden them further. Besides, Basil and his men had survived worse. Surely they could count this toward their quota of two battles a year, even.

“I will find this murderer, Basil, rest assured.” Aldhard said. _“_But I think I must do it alone. _You _should seek shelter.” Perhaps before one of those birds got something vital, like an eye. Of course, Basil had two, but somehow it seemed spiteful to leave him to fend for himself when he was so obviously indisposed.

Basil swore, covering his head. “Y-you promise to, Sir Voss? - OW!” The crows really didn’t like Basil. Well, Aldhard’s mother had always said that if animals hated someone, one should be leery of trusting that person.

“I swear to you that I will find the one responsible for your state.” Aldhard pressed a fist to his chest and bowed low.

Basil stared at him a moment longer, but then a crow flew in his face to claw it, and he was forced to flee. 

Aldhard waved the guards on after Basil, as a few crows had remained to menace _them. _“Go! I’d find somewhere without windows!” He called after him, eyes glittering with amusement that he really hoped they’d overlooked by the late hour and their predicament both.

Then when they were occupied with their flight, he turned back to the bushes.

#

“Oh dear me.” The knight captain said, apparently in no hurry to hunt down a murderer as he’d just sworn he would. “I hope he didn’t break anything.”

The minstrel peeked over the bushes: one of the guards had tripped on a hill, probably due to his terrible error of trying to fend off the messengers of the underworld in the first place. He tumbled down the whole of it, shouting in pain and fear. Crows practically buried him in a mass of writhing wings and virulent hate.

The minstrel flopped back in the grass a moment and breathed, wide-eyed. That… hadn’t gone to plan as he’d intended. But surely it had gone.

He heard the soft squelch of boots on wet stone, then an equally soft creak and _hup _and a heartbeat after the knight captain landed beside him on the overgrown lawn. 

The minstrel peered up at him. The knight captain peered back down.

“… good evening,” The captain said, and he made the friendliness sound more genuine than when he had said the same words to the guards a few minutes prior. The minstrel was, a little, impressed by that trick. “I don’t suppose you’d seen a murderer running around here?”

The minstrel didn’t answer.

The knight captain cracked a wan smile, looking him over with a leisurely sort of affect that was equal parts galling and relieving. “… no,” He said, “No, I expect you haven’t.”

“There _was _a murder.” The minstrel blurted. “One of your guards - the one in black - he was dismembering a body in an alleyway.”

The knight captain’s reaction to that was considerably more emotive; his eyes widened, his shoulders jerked back, and a frowned pulled at his face. “The one in black.” He repeated, like he was translating something from another tongue into his, and he wanted to be _sure _of what he heard.

“Yes.” The minstrel nodded. “I thought I could lead him in front of a patrol and have them see him for what he was, but he called on them to join him chasing _me.”_

“Why were you down an alleyway?” The knight furrowed his brows.

“That’s not important.” The minstrel dismissed. “What’s important is that he was _dismembering _a _body_ and the crows found him guilty.”

“Is that what that was?” Aldhard squinted after the guards a moment, probably trying in vain to pick out the mass of writhing angry crows from the regular dark of night. “I - my friend, I wish to take you at your word, but I have reservations.”

The minstrel sat up in the grass. His hood had fallen off, and his hair was in disarray, and he was very grateful then for his mask. “Of course you do.” He said, scanning at the corner of his eyes for an escape path. 

Aldhard continued to stand between him and the gate. He looked around with a frown on his lips; he seemed as anxious to be discussing this with the minstrel as the minstrel was to be out in the open, yet somehow unwilling to let the minstrel off on his way. _Warriors. Always having this idea that they need to interfere until they understand, _the minstrel thought with some annoyance. 

“… come with me.” Aldhard offered, “I’ll put you up for the night, and you can tell me exactly what it is you saw.”

The minstrel stared at him, and then the empty property looming above them.

“Not there.” Aldhard said, rather pointlessly. The house they sat in front of had obviously been long abandoned. “I don’t live in town.”

The minstrel was not sure if he found that reassuring. “And where do you live?” He asked, giving sincere consideration to whether he really ought to go trusting this knight, even if it had worked out for him the one time. Maybe long cons were more to the man’s preference. 

“I live across town.” The knight said, and the minstrel searched for a lie in his appearance and found… a paper bag in his hand, actually.

“Are those groceries.” The minstrel stared at the bag like it was going to grow teeth and bite him. Was Weiss such a poor town that the nobility didn’t keep _servants? _It seemed unlikely.

Aldhard looked down at his arms like he’d forgot that he was carrying anything at all and balked. “I- that is none of your business.”

The minstrel got to his feet and walked closer.

The knight held his ground and appeared to look him over, probably for blood. 

The minstrel was pleased to note that he would find _none, _thank you. He put a finger into the top of the bag and pulled it open to peer inside, ignoring the knight’s noise of considerable offense. (Fat chance of him worrying about that - the knight hadn't even struck him, so how was the minstrel supposed to find him threatening?) Yes, yes, the minstrel was ignoring propriety. The knight had really better get used to… it… the minstrel squinted at the contents of the bag, thoughts derailed. 

Those. Those things in the bag, they were blue and yellow and… potentially tasty. “Why in Nayru’s name are you carting around a bag of mushrooms.”

“I told you that it is none of your concern.” Aldhard’s voice came out in a pitch unmistakable for anything but complaint. It wasn’t a very knightly voice, certainly not a noble one, but it made the minstrel like him a bit better. “If you don’t wish to discuss what you witnessed, I sympathize, but I need as much information as possible to-”

The minstrel tuned him out, focusing on the mushrooms. They were varieties he’d never seen before that evening. Bright yellow ones with a rubbery bounce to their caps, and fluorescent blue that seemed to glow faintly in the light. 

He relaxed a margin. _Groceries. He really was out buying groceries from the caravan, _he realized, and flicked his gaze up to Sir Voss, who by now looked flustered _and _unhappy.

“Well?” The knight demanded.

“Okay.” The minstrel said.

“You cannot just-” The knight paused, deflated a margin. “… okay?”

“Yes. I’ll go with you.” The minstrel said, very patient. Sir Voss seemed to sink down from whatever argument he had planned in absence of an expected denial.

“… oh.” The knight captain said, perhaps attempting a recovery of his dignity. If only a smidge of it. “Very well.” He swept his arm forward and bowed to the minstrel. It was a strange action to grant someone with no land, no name and no title. The minstrel tried to decide if he believed it genuine. The knight straightened again and held out his arm. “Then, follow me.”

It _seemed _like he was genuine. It was frustrating to encounter someone hard to fluster, because that was the minstrel’s main method for ferreting out the lies everyone insisted on telling him. 

Maybe he’d found a foothold with these mushrooms, then… He took the knight’s arm and this time, did not even complain to himself about the indignity. “Okay.”

#

The minstrel wasn’t sure what to expect of the Voss estate, and spent their trip through the upper district considering it. The houses there were all old, most still inhabited, by families that have been established for generations… bumpkins, sure, but noble ones.

Sir Aldhard glanced down at him. “You didn’t use the gate.” It isn’t a question.

“Well, no.” The minstrel says, seeing no point in a lie. “I know you mentioned - but with the Gerudo staying outside…”

“You made a good call.” The knight looked bone-tired a moment. “… we’ll talk about that inside. Hylians.”

The sentence piqued his interest. "Where _is _inside?”

“I live outside the walls.” The knight shrugged, “In a hunting lodge, or it used to be. I grew up there. Never bothered looking for a place in the city.”

The minstrel tightened his grip, and leaned his head against the knight’s arm as if they were on a date. They passed a row of lit windows.

“It’s easier to host that way,” Aldhard added, which made no sense at all. 

The minstrel looked forward to finding out why. “You’re not a serial killer, right?”

The knight almost fumbled his next step, and turned his head a little to regard him. “… I’m a knight, Sir Minstrel.”

The minstrel peered up at him between his bangs. “You’re not a Gilles de Rais, though?”

“… I…” Sir Aldhard looked at him with an expression of utmost caution. “Who is…?”

“A bluebeard.” The minstrel persisted, tucking his head again to hide the smile threatening at the corners of his mouth.

“Definitely not.” The knight cast him a dour look - oh no, he’d been caught - and called for the gates to be opened.

The guards gossiped, as before, about the young woman hanging off the knight commander’s arm. The minstrel tried to ignore it.

Outside, though. “So… _do _you-”

The knight responded immediately. “No.”

The minstrel’s lips curled. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of, Sir Knight.”

The knight looked down at him. He was frowning. _“No.”_

The minstrel dug his chin into the man’s arm, just a little. “You’re no fun.”

#

The cabin was nestled in a patch of woods beyond the road, marked by a path of several glowing lanterns. They extinguished each one in passing, leaving a swath of treacherous darkness in their wake. 

The minstrel could not make out much of the building beyond that it was reasonably large; modest by the standard of nobles and massive on the scale of Kakariko. They had to take a half-flight of stairs to reach the door.

“I didn’t think anyone built in the swamp.” The minstrel commented.

His escort tipped his head. “You can do it. Usually on wood stilts; you replace them every three years and upkeep the house, and it’s fine… but our family could afford stone and earth when this lodge was commissioned. They had a foundation built.”

With that curiosity answered - and others stoked in its place - the minstrel went quiet. 

The inside was lit by coal-stocked braziers, and several candles set in alcoves. A fireplace that took up the middle of the room, which the minstrel immediately noted; he had not seen one outside of Castletown’s Keep before, because they were so expensive to make and inefficient for heating. He tried to imagine having so much money to decide on aesthetics over function and couldn't quite manage it - it’s like a far off childhood dream. The knight commander had claimed to grow up there, so the minstrel refrained from poking at the choice aloud. (He was, sometimes, capable of discretion and tact. Where they suited him.)

There’s a blonde-and-white fur rug in front of the fire and large pillows strewn around the floor, along with a low table curiously akin to the ones preferred in Kakariko. 

The rug _moved; _the minstrel returned his gaze to it and realized he’d managed to overlook what was either the fluffiest dog or the smallest wolfos he had ever seen. Sir Aldhard, in the middle of putting away his groceries, looked at it too.

“Ascelin let you in again, I see.” He said it without inflecting how he felt about that one way or the other.

The probably-dog yawned, tongue curling, and then peered up at Aldhard with dark eyes. It seemed to be expecting a treat.

From the look on Aldhard’s face it was destined for disappointment. “I have no idea what zap shrooms will do to you. Shoo.” The knight turned away from the begging puppy and resumed facing the minstrel instead. “I can offer you a bed,” He offered, something close to apology on his face. “But I’m afraid I don’t have much in the pantry.”

The minstrel looked between him and the bag. “… but you bought groceries?”

Sir Aldhard’s cheeks tinted. “… as I told you before,” He shifted, “I take good care of my skin.”

Glee suffused the minstrel. “With _mushrooms_.”

“Yes.” Aldhard gathered his dignity - a moot point in the face of a minstrel who mocked all and respected maybe two or three people in all the world - and said, “I make a potion of them.”

The minstrel rolled that over in his head. “But… Are they edible?”

The puzzled look on Sir Aldhard’s face told how little he knew, even when the minstrel had made so many errors around him.

The minstrel smiled at him and held out a hand for the bag.

#

They had mushroom risotto for dinner, as the minstrel had found a bag of dry rice near the back of the pantry. With permission (“It’s your house and your food, Sir Voss…”) Aldhard brought a plate outside for the mysterious Ascelin. He was trailed by a bouncy ball of yappy fur, but no third person appeared and on Aldhard’s return they tucked in. They were both ravenous, for different reasons, and made it through their first serving without a word exchanged. 

They were more leisurely with their second helpings. 

The minstrel was the one who broke the silence. “You know I was deathly serious, I hope?” He asked, peering at the knight. “About the body.”

Aldhard nodded. But he didn’t seem concerned.

The minstrel set down his spoon. “… why didn’t you go looking, then?”

Aldhard looked at him over his drink. His expression was a measured calm, and he took a while to answer. When he did, he was serious to the point of unnerving the minstrel. “I had the choice to help you or handle the body.” He looked back down at his food; the clink and click of his fork against the plate was deafeningly loud between sentences. 

The minstrel focused on the sound of their breathing, and tried not to think. 

Aldhard didn’t look up this time. “You’re sure of what you saw?”

“Of course.” The minstrel bristled, eyes flicking up to Aldhard’s face so he could _glare _at the man. “I - you know what I am. I can’t even keep up my glamour…” He covered his eye with a hand; a noise born of frustration escaped him. It had been too long since he’d eaten for his magic, and he lacked the energy to maintain an illusion. His fingers slid down and curled, cupping his chin.

Aldhard nodded. “I sent word about it - not you, the body. My knights are quick enough, I think, to manage without me tonight.” He eyed the minstrel with his brow furrowed and his mouth tight. “How much of you did the murderer see?”

The minstrel let his hand fall back to his side. “I had my mask up.” He was horribly aware that the knight could see all of his face as he said it. “Just my nose and eyes. Maybe my hair.”

“It looked silver outside.” The knight’s gaze lingered on the locks of his hair a moment. “If that’s what he expects to see, it should keep you safe.” There was a strange emphasis on ‘you’ that left the minstrel uneasy.

“There are other Sheikah?” He hadn’t seen them. That was… that was perhaps his worst oversight.

“In the slums.” The knight confirmed. “You don’t have a tattoo. You’ll be harder to identify without the Eye in the middle of your forehead.” The knight seemed relieved about that, but, “I’m worried they’ll look for a scapegoat. Right now…” A look of concentration came over his face, one that was quick to turn troubled. “You’re positive the man in black was the one.”

“Yes.” The minstrel glared at him. “Surely you could smell the blood on him?” Honestly.

The knight’s eyes widened like he’d been put off balance. “You can _smell_\- never mind.” He held up a hand. “… I believe you-”

The minstrel rolled his eyes. “Good, because I’m telling the truth.”

“- but you’re leveling accusations at a member of the nobility.”

“Ugh, _fuck _the nobility.”

It was not a situation for laughing, but for a brief moment the knight wore an amused look anyway. “Maybe not Basil Lewenhart.” Saying so, he picked up his chalice. (It was full of peat whiskey; a new, smoking, throat-scorching experience for the minstrel.) Aldhard took a long drink. When the metal came away from his lips he continued. “You were asking if I was a Gilles de Rais?… I think Basil is more the type.” His gaze darkened. “Your word against his is a copper against the royal coffers, my friend.”

“Why?” The minstrel leaned forward, head cocked to the side. “He’s rich?” The Lewenharts were in disgrace after fighting on the wrong side of the civil war eighteen years prior. He didn’t know if they’d gotten to keep, or recover, their bank accounts. But surely Weiss's memory wasn't so short as to forget that?

“Connected.” Aldhard said, a look on his face that was aiming for neutral and ending on mild disapproval instead. “The Duke’s father favors him, and he is the guard captain because of it.”

The minstrel had a sudden stabbing feeling in the space between his eyes. “I… I’m sorry, but you’re the knight captain?”

Aldhard shrugged and speared a mushroom to eat. “Yes.” Unhelpful bastard. See if the minstrel agreed to cook for him again.

(The minstrel supposed that meant Weiss had more than enough men to need it, though he’d heard Castletown hadn’t recovered enough to say the same. The idea that the princess might have a lacklustre guard irritated him, but it wasn’t his job to worry about that anymore.

Still, it was hard to break such an old habit.)

“So he’s connected.” The minstrel leaned forward, “And a serial killer and you knew?”

Aldhard’s eyes popped wide. “No! No, to my knowledge he isn’t a serial killer. But…” His voice dropped and he leaned on the table, “Honestly, if someone rubbed him wrong… and he thought he could get away with it, well.” He drummed his fingers, “I think he could.” 

No kidding he _could_ kill. The crows had found him guilty and marked him.

The minstrel said nothing, only stared. Aldhard slanted the minstrel a sort of wide-eyed sheepish look. “That’s, er, also why I figured it was bullshit when he said he was chasing a killer. He’d have sent his guards ahead of him, or knocked you off at the first opportunity. He’s not the type to risk himself.”

The minstrel pushed around his food, no longer hungry. Work was such an unpleasant table topic. “Why.”

“Bremen.” Aldhard said. “Basil doesn’t like people who are different, or maybe he knows that’s what Bremen doesn’t like.” He stared at his plate. “It’s not exactly a secret. I’m sure you know that.”

“You’re not like Bremen.” It isn’t a question. “You clearly don’t like him. Why do you know all this?”

Aldhard’s lips twitched. He set down his fork; apparently he wasn’t hungry any more, either. “That would be because my father was a Lewenhart.”

#

The minstrel waited for an explanation. When one didn’t come out on its own, and he’d waited patiently for the end of their supper, he decided he’d draw it out. Kicking and screaming if it came to it. 

“Your name is Voss.” He said, “It’s a far cry from Valorous Lion, isn’t it?”

His host looked up from clearing the table - himself, not calling on a servant - and smiled a little at the minstrel. It looked genuine, almost shy. “My mother is a redhead. The name is from her, of course. It… my father being disowned was due to their marriage.” He padded to the sink and set the dishes in it to rinse them. The minstrel got up from the preparation table they’d eaten at, and went to stand not too far from his host. He looked at the knight, and waited again. 

(A spy that wanted something could wait a very long time, indeed, to get what he wished. And the minstrel was no exception.) “I’m sure I sound like an ass.” Aldhard said, staring into the sink. “I’m very fortunate by some twisted metric. But my mother was a Gerudo; of her children - my siblings - I looked the most Hylian.”

The minstrel looked him over, obvious, pointed and slow. “My, Lord Ganondorf. You are smaller than the tales I’ve heard of you.”

The expression on the knight’s face was not exactly amused. He turned his head to the minstrel. “Is this how you usually react when people bear their secrets to you?”

The minstrel stuck his tongue out. “When they tell such obvious lies you can be sure that I do.”

“Ah, then let that magnanimous nature be my favorite thing about you.” The knight gave him a sullen look, and the minstrel did not think for a moment that he was forgiven. There was a tension in the air like the crackle of static, but the minstrel did not let it bother him. The chance of the knight being capable of mage-work was not much more than the chance of him really being Gerudo-born. 

The minstrel rolled his shoulders back. “Tell me another story.” He requested, putting up his hands in a facsimile of surrender. “I promise to listen til the end this time.”

The knight removed himself from the sink, and dried his hands. “I think the time for stories is past,” He said. The minstrel wondered if he was actually hurt, but he did not think that was the case. More likely the knight had recognized a dead end and was cutting his losses. 

“So,” The minstrel said, carefully drawing a knife to keep folded in his palm, hidden and ready. “What time is it, then?”

The knight turned again to peer at him. He was unarmed - had been since their meal - and in his hands there appeared to be only an embroidered dishtowel. He blinked slowly, twice, like he was contemplating something and could not be bothered to interrupt it for something so mundane as answering a question. 

“You’re weak enough that you can’t disguise yourself, right?” The knight asked him. 

Loathe as he was to discuss it, the minstrel looked him in the eye and nodded. “As I said.”

The knight’s lips cracked in a small, unhappy smile. His brow furrowed down - he looked quite determined to do something, and the minstrel’s grip on the knife he held tightened. “Drink my blood.”

… The minstrel nearly dropped the knife he’d been holding at the ready. “Sorry,” He said, eyes wide. “Could you repeat that?”

Maybe he’d hit his head. Or maybe the knight really was mad.

The knight set the towel aside and held up his empty hands. “Drink my blood. It will help you. Right?”

Yes. Of course. It was also as good as a contract. The minstrel did not wish to sign his life away, not to this man or to anyone. “What benefit does that do you?” He asked, instead of acquiescing or fleeing. 

The knight blinked at him. “You can’t hurt someone whose blood you’ve drunk. Is that true?”

Not in its entirety. The minstrel gave him a hard look. “If you’re looking for a way to render me unable to fight you, you should keep looking. Any contract is broken if you try to bring me harm.”

The knight took a half step nearer to him, hands still up. “I’m not interested in hurting you,” He said, “I want to help. And if there’s an assurance that once I’ve bled for you - once I’ve helped you - that you can’t hurt me without _reasonable cause, _all the better. So, I offer you; drink from me.”

The minstrel blanched and stepped back from him. He felt- what did he feel in the face of such bluntness?

The knight wasn’t bad looking, certainly, to the minstrel’s sensibilities. But he was also a knight - a noble - and a target of his work. And a bit older than his usual amusements. 

And. Well. He was offering something that the minstrel had never been offered. His ears twitched, and almost without his conscious decision he started looking for exits. 

The knight put down his hands and backed away from him. The minstrel realized he’d pressed himself against the far wall. When he looked at the knight’s face it was turned away from him, and something like an apology was writ across it. 

“I have misstepped.” The knight said, expression neutral. “I apologize. I did not mean to distress you. Only to offer you aid.”

The minstrel did not respond to him. But he looked a long time without speaking. “You want to sign a contract,” He said, like he was approaching a great and terrible beast. 

(He was. He had never had a Hylian _offer _him blood unasked, as if it were normal, as if they were unafraid.)

“With me,” The minstrel added, though he felt rather silly for doing it: of course there was no one there but the two of them, and he would have noticed the scent of another person intruding long ago. “Because you will think it will keep me from hurting you.”

The knight looked up, and if his expression was cautious his eyes had a hard bright light to them that reminded the minstrel uncomfortably of fire and fledgling hope. “By your own word it will safeguard me. For I have decided to trust you, and I have no reason to hurt someone that I trust.”

Were the world only so, such a simple and honest place! The minstrel’s mouth split in a smile; he watched the knight focus on his mouth: each incisor sharper than a Hylian’s, with big eyeteeth that curved back like the fangs of a hunter. 

( “_To grip, little one, where you bite down_.”)

“I cannot trust as easily as you.” He said. “Pray let me think it over for tonight.”

The knight captain inclined his head. “Of course. I did not mean to force your hand... I hope you’ll forgive me.”

“It is ungodly to hold grudges,” The minstrel said, as if he’d ever spent much time worrying over what was godly.

The look the knight gave him made him suspect the man knew it, too. “... I’ll show you upstairs, then. Perhaps after a rest you’ll find things to be better.” The knight offered his arm to the minstrel. But when the minstrel didn’t take it, the knight only bowed his head and headed up the stairs.

The minstrel followed him. He was shown to a comfortable enough room, though by the smell it was one that had gone unused for a while. He waited until the knight appeared to be leaving him - “Goodnight, my friend.” - to speak again. 

“Why did you bring me back here?” His fingers curled around the door-frame, nails digging into birch-wood to ground him. 

The knight paused partway down the hall. The look he gave the minstrel was not- what he had been expecting. It was not frustrated. It was not lustful. 

The knight looked worn thin, with a lax mouth and brows, and half-lidded eyes that had bags forming underneath. His shoulders had a slump about them that was nearly irresistible, for while the minstrel had no trouble denying anger or cajoling he had never been able to keep his heart stone against tears.

“Because you needed a place to sleep.” The knight gave him something that attempted to be a smile - it could not reach his eyes, and a deception so plain was no deception at all. The minstrel thought to himself that he could probably trust the sort of person who looked at him like that. 

If he made it through the evening without the knight creeping back and interrupting him - he’d consider it. He’d consider trusting. 

“What’s happened?” The minstrel asked, digging his nails down harder. “That you’re willing to barter your blood for safety and assistance? Shouldn’t a knight be prouder?”

The knight’s expression turned - puzzled. “It’s only blood. I spill it often enough in the ring.” He said, and outed another lie by the process. 

_I rarely fight anyone, indeed. _

“And if a little blood could help you believe that I am an ally,” The knight shrugged, lips twisting in a sort of mirthful oh-well I-tried smile, “Then it would have been well worth a pricked finger and filled thimble.”

The minstrel felt the wood start to cave beneath his nails. “Dearest knight,” He murmured, eyes dark, “Were I to accept you. I would take so much more than a thimble.”

The knight’s eyes widened. He looked at the minstrel in a new way, like he’d noticed something threatening in an otherwise inoffensive visage. The minstrel waited.

And the knight said, “Oh! Well, that works itself out, doesn’t it.” He shook his head. “Better that you wait for an off day, then, so I don’t trouble anyone by fainting.”

And he turned and continued back to his room with the sort of obliviousness that was hard to be faked. The minstrel watched him go, and thought about the best way to vouchsafe his claims.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you've noticed that the narrative switches to roles rather than names when the minstrel is making the effort to distance himself. He's such a dweeb.


	9. Alone can be dangerous

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The minstrel goes about things underhandedly. This takes longer than he'd really hoped for.  
Also, he finally gives someone his damn name. 
> 
> Trigger warnings: brief discussions of slavery and racism. Also some blood and mild injuries.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Took last month off from posting. It was just a shitty time for a lot of reasons. Sorry about that.  
Say, did you know the word "clown" originated in the mid 1500's to refer to a foolish or incompetent person? Because I didn't before looking it up for this chapter. I thought it was younger than that. 
> 
> This chapter is 10k. It's here to bleed your eyes. You *have* been warned. <3  
Beta'd by Miss Monie. Thank you again! I'm sorry I gave it to you two days before the posting goal!

# Chapter Nine

## Alone can be Dangerous

  


If you went out early enough in Weiss, there weren’t any bugs to annoy you yet. The minstrel appreciated this little secret the moment he realized he held it, that very morning. He headed for a tavern in the middle area of town to see if they needed a musician.

He’d left the Voss estate a little before dawn and head into the city with full intentions of checking the story he’d been fed, at such an hour that he expected the knight captain would still be trying to splash himself into awareness. It wasn’t every day someone claimed something as wild as the tale of palace intrigue and attempted assassinations Aldhard had spun over dinner. Almost as wild a tale as the promises in a serenade, or the whispers of a royal bastard, or a boy who claimed to have traveled through time and fought a great evil.

He found a good tavern to start his search in and made inquiries about whether they needed a bard, but they seemed unusually reticent. The barkeeper had asked him to leave in no uncertain terms before he’d gotten any questions out about the knight captain or the guards.

Speaking of the guards, several were patrolling outside when he left the tavern. The minstrel decided to make himself scarce.

The only route that wasn’t blocked by more guards was the one that led into the noble district, so he found himself sneaking into a neighborhood known for its families of knights to avoid patrolling guards… the irony wasn’t lost on him. But there were less people looking in the area, and he had no doubt that what little the murderous guard had seen of him the night would be making rounds as the description of the killer today. The knights should be less intent on finding him, if Aldhard’s words had rung true… even if the minstrel wasn’t tripping over himself to test them face to face. 

No one seemed to be outside of the estates he walked by. It was a pretty enough neighborhood - wood and stucco buildings. A few of them even looked to be brick. Most had sprawling green grounds between the homes and the fences. One - the house he’d hidden beneath the night before, running from his prey - was wild and overgrown. The gatepost had a plaque that read something, though it was half covered in thorny vines. _Ro-n-h-_

He was readying to clear the leaves when he heard something behind him. He turned to look - three men in white tunics were approaching the hill he stood on.

_Pests. _He moved on.

The guards persisted in following him at a distance through the neighborhood, but didn’t call out or demand he stop. He found it odd until he realized that in all likelihood they were waiting for him to get somewhere less open. 

At the next corner, he headed for a house on a hill with stone fences and slipped over the barrier with the ease of an alley cat, hiding and listening for his tail to realize they’d been had.

A few moments later curses drifted over the fence. The minstrel crawled for the house and tucked himself behind a bush - hey, it’d worked once before and he hadn’t been caught leaving.

He heard the gates rattle. He waited a while, listening as the noise grew. There was the soft _click _of a door.

He peered through the bush. A dark haired Hylian was walking away from the main house. They walked to the fence, where a trio of guards were waiting. The Hylian had a conversation with them that was regrettably beyond the range of the minstrel’s hearing, but it sent the visitors off looking belligeren and dazed.

The Hylian shook his head in annoyance and stayed at the gate, watching for something. The minstrel waited a few moments for the Hylian to lean against the metal and relax. When he did, the minstrel began the process of creeping out of the bush.

He looked over what he could see of the house. Wood frame like most of Weiss with stucco and… seashells? Molded into walls. It gave the surface a rough texture. A few exposed wooden beams and pipes offered possible handholds, but the house would be difficult to scale. The minstrel edged around the back of the property and out of the Hylian’s possible line of sight.

The back of the estate was dominated by a sprawling pond with a surface like smoked glass. The minstrel stumbled and stared down at it wide-eyed. Cattails and willow trees edged the shore, which dropped off in grassy cliffs in some sections and sloped into a sandy bank at others. It was beautiful, though the minstrel found himself curious whether it held any connection to the swamp.

He backed away from the dark water and returned to the house wall.

He settled behind a bush, listening and waiting - the fence was not so far away from this part of the house that he couldn’t hear the telltale clinking of chainmail and patrolling guards - when he heard a familiar voice shouting. He moved closer to the source, edging towards the house’s front.

“-yone is out… day, aren- ey?”

He moved closer and wished that his ears were better. Hylians didn’t know what they had, he thought without charity.

A low, steady voice issued from near the gate. He supposed it was the home owner. “Probably something to do with your stray.”

“I doubt it.” That… was the knight captain. 

“I was under the impression you might bring him.” The voices were drawing nearer.

“I might have, but he was gone.” Aldhard sounded mournful. The minstrel wasn’t sure whose benefit it could be for, but the idea of him regretting a guest he’d met twice leaving so early was ludicrous. “Ascelin said he took his leave while it was still dark out.”

“Why was your stable master looking around the place so early?”

The knight captain huffed out a reluctant sounding laugh. “Honestly, I couldn’t tell you. I’m not sure I want to know-”

The minstrel heard the door open and shut. He began looking for an unlocked door or a window. Or one with a small lock he could break quietly. You only had to hide your tracks if it could come back on you, after all!

He found a servant’s door that had seen better days and smiled to himself while he prised the lock loose. _Bingo. _

#

The house was dusty, was the minstrel’s first thought - and he was honestly surprised. What sort of noble lived like this?

He crept down the hall after the ambient light he could see at the end, figuring that he could follow it to the rooms actually in use. Tapestries - partly moth-eaten - and vases that had seen more glittering days filled the alcoves of the hall. The minstrel paused in front of one of the better off ones to examine the crest that took up its center; a shield blazoned with an armed knight astride a strange monster - a horselike chimera with a scaled and curling tail, on a field of deep green - took up the most attention.

The minstrel stared at it. _A noble’s house. That green would make it - Ocorra. _He’d broken into the house of the old knight captain of Bremen.

_I suppose he’s not doing so well since he ceded his title._ The minstrel walked on carpets whenever he could to avoid noise, or a noticeable difference in the fine layers of dust on the floor. 

The last few feet of the passage were conspicuously clean, to his curiosity - he peered out into a hall free of mess. He smelled pine, and heard faint crackling noises. _Another fireplace?_

Light spilled out of an open door between twin staircases. He crept closer to it.

Inside, the knight captain could be heard speaking to - someone. The minstrel moved up the stairs quickly, in case a servant was coming with tea. He straightened his back and walked as if he were a guest instead of a skulker, except that he stayed very light on his feet - it was generally better to be unremarkable.

The voices echoed at the top of the stairs - there was a door at the top that he gently prised open.

The parlor with the fireplace was two stories and open. Impossible to heat that way, the minstrel though, but very good for his spying. He went to the darkest end of the room, pressed himself against the wall near a couch, lowered himself to his belly, and moved forward enough to get a look.

Sir Aldhard was down there of course - the lights overhead were not flattering to him, they made his brown hair look decidedly pink at the roots - and across from him sat a small Hylian with dark hair and grey, boring clothes.

The minstrel knew it hadn’t been long ago that he’d been thinking Tetra gauche for wearing bright-dyed clothes, but it was so _odd _to see a noble in Weiss that wasn’t wearing at least one piece with color. Aldhard’s host looked as if living in the swamp had drained the life from him! His skin wasn’t even pink, it was _white. _Like a corpse!

The minstrel thought his own notion was ridiculous, but… he sniffed the air, just in case.

No. He didn’t smell any monsters. The man was just… pale. And being washed out by candlelight. Still, the resemblance left the minstrel nervous.

He wondered if the man entertaining Aldhard was a son of the family he hadn’t heard of, or Orrin Ocorra of the Eelweed. He didn’t _look_ like a man pushing sixty… but then Aldhard didn’t look like he was pushing thirty, and he was in his forties. The minstrel very nearly rolled his eyes.

“_I take care of my skin! The secret is these mushrooms!_ No, the secret was that Aldhard was- … well, maybe the mushrooms had a hand in it. But if he had been telling the truth the night before his _lineage _was as much a factor as anything.

(_“Why should I trust you?”_

“_Well - I mean, you don’t have to trust me. But you have to trust _someone_.”)_

Annoying. Annoying. Annoying. He shut his eyes a moment and focused on his breathing. He didn’t need to be thinking about that now. He had people he trusted. At least four! And they were… far away from him, for now.

He didn’t need a maybe-Hylian, maybe-foreign knight to trust.

The last Hylian who’d trusted him he’d burned pretty well, anyway. Maybe if he mentioned that to Aldhard he’d tone down his… _courting. _For all that it was platonic, the minstrel couldn’t call it anything else.

The old men spent a while doddering, as old men tended to, before they got to anything with _meat. _The minstrel supposed they needed appetizers to work up to these things and tried to be patient. It wasn’t as if he had elsewhere to be. 

An old housemaid came in with a tea tray, set it on the table between them, and bowed. The minstrel was curious to note that both knights not only acknowledged ger presence at all, but _thanked her_ before she left. The downstairs door clicked shut, and the minstrel heard the faint scuffle of the maid’s house shoes approach the door on the upstairs. She was apparently checking it was shut - after trying the knob, she shuffled away.

The room was silent except for the crackling of the fire. 

A shifting sound heralded Aldhard stretching. “Your cat met me at the corner. She’s still rather - territorial, isn’t she?”

“Hmm.” The other man shrugged, as if the behavior of his pet had very little to do with him. “She was making sure the clowns didn’t return.”

“… clowns…” Aldhard echoed, sitting back. A tension laced his shoulders and belied the serene expression he wore. From the minstrel’s perch, he looked to have shadows under his eyes. 

The other man did not explain himself, but the minstrel figured he meant the guards who’d been sticking their noses where they were liable to be bitten off.

The old knight was doing a better job of looking calm, but his fist was tight against the furniture and his nails - dark with something, paint or blood - were digging thin lines into the wood.

Quiet again. The minstrel wondered what held their tongues. 

Aldhard was the one to break it. “The one last night - a guard did it.”

The old knight’s nails gouged narrow lines into the finish of his chair-arm. He tipped his head back and said, in a low and measured voice, “Your note alluded to that.”

_He sent a note?… _The minstrel ran the night before through his mind, bared his teeth. _When he went to the stable hand._

“I have a witness… had a witness. But he’s a traveling minstrel.” Aldhard scrubbed his face with a hand. “No one will believe him.”

The host did not respond to that. The minute dragged itself out. 

“Okay.” Aldhard waved a hand. “_You_ would believe him. But until you reveal yourself as the new demon king? We’re stuck with the old council.”

The minstrel was startled to hear a snort from the host. “Isn’t that wound a little fresh to go picking?”

“Well, with anyone else.” Aldhard picked up his tea cup to drink, or maybe just to stall. “I don’t know what to do, Orrin.” 

_Well, okay. _The confirmation of who he was eavesdropping on was good. “Or - well, honestly, what to think of this. The guard - he’s… he can’t have done all of them.”

“Why not?” Orrin leaned forward.

“Because he’s not a nobody. Someone would notice if he was running off once a month for the time it takes to stalk someone, kill them, dismember them _and_ dump their body!”

_Okay, _the minstrel thought. That was reasonable. You couldn’t just get rid of a body like you could order a jar of milk in a bar. _The murderer I saw was a guard with rank. How much rank? _Aldhard had been annoyingly reticent on the point, merely insisted that the minstrel avoid other Lewenharts because _they’re a clan of racist windbags _which was a little suspicious, though if honest then an admirable show of rationality regarding blood. But in general, the minstrel did not trust someone who insisted that they were the only reliable source of information unless he had three other sources minimum to confirm it. (For obvious reasons this was a high bar, and one rarely cleared.)

Aldhard’s teacup chinked against the tray. He sounded rather resigned, and unhappy for it. “I’d like to see his time-sheets. He had the week off. A holiday before the trip.” Aldhard waved his free hand again - the minstrel wondered if it helped or if it was just a useless habit. It looked a bit silly from a grown man, and a knight at that.

“That would have given him time.” The man - the old knight captain, the minstrel corrected himself - tipped his head back to think. The minstrel stayed still, reliant on the dimness of the upstairs to conceal him if he didn’t ruin it and _move_. 

Sir Orrin’s eyes appeared to roam the room without focusing overlong on anything. “Could someone else be doing the stalking?”

_That’s a thought._

“And - what, briefing him?” Aldhard rubbed his cheek. “It… it’s possible. It’s not as if it would be a new behavior - we handle situations in the field with scouts much the same. But… there’s much more risk attacking someone alone.”

“He’s a guard.” Orrin said, “He could be detaining them. If he knows the patrols, he could take them somewhere remote.”

That… was depressingly plausible for the minstrel.

Aldhard’s tone shifted to something dubious. “You’re not suggesting he could be a murderer on a tight schedule.”

“It seems unlikely. But if he has a few fellows that will look the other way, or…” He lowered his gaze from the second floor, to peer at Aldhard. The minstrel thanked the goddesses profusely for that concession. “Could he be using his home?”

“That would be - incredibly stupid.” Aldhard considered it. “What do you suppose I’d have to promise to get a royal warrant to search it? My firstborn?”

The smile that Orrin responded with was curiously bitter, as if Aldhard were promising something he could never deliver on. “Get the duke on your side,” He suggested, “and try to keep his father out of it.” 

“He’ll hate that.” Aldhard paused, then added, “He’s not fond of me, either.”

“Eh.” Orrin raised his cup as if toasting with ale. It was the most the minstrel had seen him move since arriving. “We all have to work with people we don’t like very much. The blood of the goddesses doesn’t actually exclude one from that.” 

Orrin seemed like the sort of person the minstrel could probably enjoy drinking with, if only the minstrel could enjoy drinking.

They sat in silence a while, and didn’t resume the topic. Maybe they’d exhausted themselves on it. 

“That’s the bodies, maybe.” Orrin murmured, rubbing his chin. “But the swamp has been taking people, too, you’ve said?”

“Yes. Guards.” Aldhard threaded his fingers in front of him and leaned forward. The minstrel watched, curious; that was the sort of posture politicians took to lie in. “It’s been troubling. Good men have been lost.”

Orrin’s smile twitched. 

The minstrel leaned forward. He wasn’t sure what the point of that had been - if the captain was lying he’d been caught out, so… why? _Don’t you think your own men are good ones? Don’t their deaths trouble you?_

“I am worried.” Aldhard said. It was about as believable as most of his smiles. “For now it’s been people with questionable records, but - that could change easily, couldn’t it? Last night…”

“Last night you know to have happened by the hand of a guard.” Orrin murmured.

“No, listen.” Aldhard held up both hands. “There’s a part I left out. He was getting _chased by a flock of crows, _Orrin!”

That netted a frown. “I… didn’t you say this happened at midnight?”

“An hour past!” Aldhard waved both hands. “And a screaming murder was trying to peck him to death.” He rubbed his face, groaning, and they lapsed into silence a long moment. Orrin looked torn between grimness, curiosity, and a sort of wry humor. None of the three seemed to win the war for his visage, and so he stayed silent and conflicted.

Aldhard let out a deep sigh. “… Maybe it’s the curse of the Handmaid,” He offered. “Goddess knows she hasn’t been a happy sort lately.” 

Orrin’s face finally settled on an emotion; he wasn’t amused, but the minstrel noticed he didn’t discount the idea. “I think the problem might be that we don’t have enough people we can trust.”

“That too.” Aldhard grumbled. “Without the funds to do more… Or the manpower. Gods, Orrin, what I could do with just five more good men. Or the rupees to build a sands-damned _fence_.”

_Ah. This could be illuminating, too,_ the minstrel thought, _but no doubt it’ll be on par with watching the paint dry. _He supposed it was good to be reminded that even a city that was mostly well to do still struggled to fund its public servants. Did knights count as those, he wondered? Did the knight captain? He wasn’t even sure if the man qualified as a lesser noble. _Servants of the crown, _is what he decided to settle on. After all, the crown served the people! Eventually. Sometimes even in a relevant way, like helping to vanquish Ganondorf when he rose up.

Orrin spoke up, “Throw a fundraiser. Offer to wash carriages shirtless.” He nodded to himself; obviously this was a superior idea, and Aldhard was lucky to have it shared with him.

The knight captain let out a sputtering laugh - somehow, the minstrel suspected he did not agree. “I’m sure that would go over well with our superiors! Not to mention the visitors from Castletown!” He shook his head. “No, it’ll have to be something else. Maybe I’ll rob a bank.”

“Well, since we’re brainstorming.” Orrin said, but they seemed content to drop the topic without any other strange suggestions.

“I really do need more knights. Our men are brilliant, but we have few, and…” Aldhard hesitated, “Well… they’re all of the same stock, more or less. It’s trying, finding one that can meet the tests, when we’re picking from a limited field.” He rubbed his head. “… I’m not sure what to do about it.”

Orrin hummed. “If old blood is the problem, scout the refugees. There are plenty to recruit from, aren’t there?” 

_If you go to the poor quarter, _the minstrel thought. _There might be someone, but if they had those skills already - don’t you think they’d have found something better than your ghetto?_

Aldhard sighed. “In theory, yes. In action - they have to meet educational standards, they have to have the money for arms and armor, and they must be fluent in the language written and spoken. Just to start.” 

Listening to that, the minstrel had a brief and insane moment where he wondered if the knight’s behavior in both of their meetings had been influenced by this apparent shortage of militant material. Then he imagined himself a knight and smothered the laugh that wanted to come out with his hand. _My sire should be crying in the afterlife. I wonder if he’d appear with the birds to give me a scolding._

The image of a strange crow attacking him for the great dishonor of becoming a knight was a strangely distracting one. He kept imagining it mostly because watching the tops of two heads as their owners drank tea was actually rather boring. If it ever happened - the bird attacking him - he decided then that he wanted to take the opportunity for what it was, and ask his genetic donor what he’d been thinking when he’d slept with a Hylian woman. No- what he’d been thinking when he’d slept with a Hylian-

Best not to finish that thought. 

He glanced down. Sir Orrin was pouring tea, now. _Riveting. _

“Have you considered sponsoring one?” The old knight captain asked. He had a terribly reasonable voice, the kind that put the minstrel in the mind of training as a child. His brother had talked the same way. _Annoying. Dull __**and **__annoying._

It felt risky laying part in sight to watch them, too. Still, it was the best way to see if they were telling untruths. Look for uncomfortable body language while they talked.

Mostly he’d been getting a Hylian’s best impression at _I am a river stone and all ills wash over me _from the old knight and _exasperated overworked parent _from knight captain Aldhard. He supposed it was promising in terms of their innocence, and that was good, but gods if it didn’t bore him. The innocent were terribly dull to observe. 

“I have,” Aldhard rubbed his forehead, “But - suppose I do, Orrin, what sort of standard do you think they’ll be held to?”

Orrin didn’t answer that. Aldhard shook his head. “It’s not that I’m not trying-”

“I know you’re trying, Voss.” Orrin interjected with a soothing sort of voice that maybe almost worked.

Aldhard’s voice _did_ lower. “But I feel as if I’m being backed into a corner. I don’t have the resources - that includes time, damn it all - to train up a troupe of refugees into a fighting force.”

“Drink your tea.” Orrin suggested - or maybe it was an order. After all, Aldhard picked the cup up and didn’t speak again until he’d finished it.

The minstrel appreciated the silence. It let him get his thoughts in order without the distraction of a conversation’s drone. Bodies were showing up in Weiss, and the military there had neither the appropriate resources to allocate nor - at least in some of the guards case - the inclination to find out who was making the bodies. That was the useful kind of horrible information. Equal parts promising and foreboding. 

It was another confirmation that these two, at least, were almost certainly not involved with the murders. It was just a damn guard, and he wondered if he didn’t know which.

“I think,” Aldhard said, several minutes later, “That at least half the problem is that the council doesn’t care.”

The minstrel’s ear twitched in interest.

Orrin stirred in his chair. He looked at Aldhard in a way that probably seemed wise, if you were on level with him or in the mind to respect anything about Orrin besides his supposed skill with a parrying dagger. “The council cares the amount they must to keep their seats.” He corrected, which, that sounded about right for any council the minstrel had ever dealt with. “Refugees have no resources to depose them. Weiss’s born citizens do, and right now their focus is directed inward. It is natural.”

“It is frustrating and short-sighted.” Aldhard grumbled. “But you’re not wrong. I know you aren’t. I just… I don’t understand it.” He ran his hands through his hair, staring downwards.

Orrin clicked his tongue. “You could start at the top and hope it trickles down,” He said, voice considered. “Or… Begin at the bottom and work up.”

They didn’t speak for a short while. The minstrel cocked his head, curious. Had he possibly stumbled in on the planning of a _coup? _Wouldn’t that be something… It seemed unlikely, though, that he could be so lucky. 

“Maybe- I’ll stop dying my hair.” Aldhard considered, tugging at a section of his bangs. He looked frustrated. “Make it obvious that I’m not different from the people being condemned.”

“No,” Orrin agreed, voice level and mild; it was terrible for it, like a harbinger of ill omen. The minstrel had to lean closer to hear. “You are different from them. You’re the knight captain of Weiss and have the ear of the Duke.” Orrin tilted his head up. “And you’re different from _the other nobles here. _Reminding them of that is dangerous.” 

Aldhard pulled at his own hair and stood up in a fit of temper. “I don’t _care!” _He snapped, “If it makes them think twice about this- even one of them-” He cut himself off, breathing hard, struggling to reign in his own anger. One… two… The minstrel watched him let out a breath and all at once the fire was lost; Aldhard’s head dropped, his shoulders slumped, and his voice grew tired. “… I have to do something about it, Orrin. I can’t leave it like this.” 

Orrin had watched him through all of it without changing expression, or even tensing in his chair. 

_Stone-hearted, _the minstrel thought with professional appreciation.

“Something needs to be done.” Orrin leaned forward to pour fresh cups of tea. “The sooner the better. If you decide that a public show is what, then I will support you. But are you certain that is wisest?”

Aldhard huffed. “You think I’ll be forcing the council into a corner with it?”

“You might.” Orrin said. “Tell me - what does a cornered fox do?”

Aldhard stared at him. “… I suppose… it gets desperate and does whatever it can see being done.” He murmured, rubbing his neck.

Orrin nodded. “That it does. For example it might throw sand in its poor, hard-working mentor’s eyes.”

“I only did that _once_, Orrin.” He paused. “And you of all people should have been prepared for it.”

Orrin waved this off, to Aldhard’s visible amusement. He sat back in his chair with a cookie from the tea tray. “Never forget that you are not alone in the countryside, Aldhard.”

Aldhard sighed and settled down across from the old knight. “I won’t. I assure you, I won’t.” He picked up his cup and drank from it straight, perhaps in an attempt to gather more of his control. “… Well, that was…” Aldhard made an aggravated sort of noise and twirled his wrist, indicating something that could have been anything. The minstrel supposed that impression was the intention. “Any gossip?” Aldhard asked. “New gossip.”

The minstrel didn’t know enough about Weiss to care about gossip, which momentarily saddened him. He loved gossip almost as much as he loved skulking in high places and strumming on his lyre whilst surrounded by nature. 

Teatime had to be wrapping up, soon, and he’d spent long enough listening in. He needed to get moving. That in mind, he crept to the wall (ideally the boards would be less liable to creak, pressed against it like he was) and began to cross the upstairs landing.

Soon he found himself in a hallway full of locked doors, which was annoying but not the greatest inconvenience he’d faced that month. It branched at the edge, and that should lead to the north wall of the property - the one overlooking the lake it got its name from. He headed forward.

The pathway was dark, with cobwebs forming on the braziers. Seemed Sir Orrin hadn’t been down this hall in a while, had he… the minstrel wondered if it were true that the old knight really lived in this house with only a maid, a cook and a valet. It sounded unsustainable, but… perhaps that was the point, and this hallway had fallen to disrepair because of it.

He looked down at the floor, which was largely dusty, but had animal tracks over it. _What in Nayru’s name…_

Cat prints. They looked like cat prints. Hadn’t Sir Aldhard mentioned one?

It was by and far the most prolific cat the minstrel had ever seen, but he wasn’t too acquainted with the comings and goings of castle felines back before he’d made the tactful retreat into Ruto’s service.

Still. There were tracks _everywhere _from that cat.

The minstrel dithered a moment, debating whether he ought to conceal his own tracks, or simply hurry out with faith that they wouldn’t lead back to him anyway if someone found them.

No one suspected he was in the house, it was understaffed, and he had a trail to follow. Surely if there was a cat it would want to be able to get out. He decided not to worry about his own tracks, and to follow the ones the cat had made, at least until he found a window.

#

The minstrel had made a horrible mistake.

Not regarding leaving his tracks - at least not yet, because so far no one had come in pursuit of him. And not in the belief that cats were masters at finding their ways in or out of places - the tracks had indeed led him to a poorly-shut shutter leading onto a raised and screened promenade. 

No, the mistake was that beyond following its tracks with the belief they’d get him out of the house, the minstrel _hadn’t accounted for the cat that made them._

There were several. 

And they were _growling at him._

The minstrel had a few tricks up his sleeve regarding animals, but they were generally difficult to play if the animal was actively fighting him in the process. He tried approaching one, eyes cast to the ground and narrowed to slits.

A louder growl and a lash of claws announced that this was doomed to painful failure. He skittered backwards and nursed his hand. Well… Maybe he could just… creep the other way. And find a window _that_ way. Yes.

He tried to retreat. The cats pursued him, backs fluffed. Growling the whole way.

“Couldn’t he have kept dogs,” the minstrel murmured to himself. Not that a dog trying to rip him to pieces would be _better_, but he would have had advance notice. And he could climb walls to get away from a dog. With a cat that wasn’t reliable!

The sound of a wailing baby and a _thump _interrupted his escape. He turned to look - a much bigger cat stood at the end of the hall looking back at him, and opened its mouth to loose another mournful wail. No - wait - he knew this one. That wasn’t a cat. That was a lynx. That was a _wild animal _the size of a _dog. _

_Goddesses preserve me._

He dashed in the direction of the many smaller cats rather than facing down the one big and angry one. The cats scattered, swiping many, many tiny claws at him. He was sure his legs were bleeding, staining his tights as he launched himself out of a door onto- a balcony overlooking the lake! He leapt the railing and crashed to the lawn, rolled, and made a mad dash for the woods. Behind him he could hear the cats raising hell at his escape.

#

Back in the parlor, a loud wail echoed from somewhere else in the house - it startled Aldhard something horrible.

“Mm.” Orrin raised his head, a mild look on his face that bellied his next words, “Sounds like Aditi caught something.”

“Do you have a _baby_?” Aldhard demanded, turning wide-eyes on his old mentor. 

“No, no.” Orrin waved a hand as he stood up. “Of course I don’t. Aditi is a cat.” He set down his empty tea cup gently and said, “Someone is in the house.”

“What?!” Aldhard grabbed his sword. “That is unacceptable!”

“She knows.” Orrin assured him, “That would be why she’s yelling.” They gathered weapons and headed in the direction of the wailing and snarling. Orrin was not as hurried or as worried as Aldhard would have liked, but then, sometimes he thought Orrin had just lost the ability to care about ninety percent of the problems that plagued them some time prior. (More likely, that he was much better at hiding it. Though Aldhard was unsure of the benefit in doing so even only in his company). 

The hallway that they followed was one of the many sections of the house Orrin had not used since he’d inherited the place fifteen years prior, choosing instead to shutter enough of the rooms that his smaller staff could handle what was left. It also allowed for Orrin’s considerably odd variation on animal husbandry, as he had less heads to worry about messing with his pack. Or acclimating the cats _to _them, for that matter.

They followed a trail of disturbed dust to the cacophony. It was at the end through an open door that they spied Aditi - a lynx queen larger than the dog Aldhard kept at home - who was at that moment prowling agitated below the trees at the fence and property line. He jerked his chin toward Orrin and said, still looking out, “I really do think you and Ascelin would get along.” 

“I was expecting another rodent.” Orrin admitted, leaning over the threshold of the door. “She’ll fuss about anything. But it was definitely a person in here - look.” 

Aldhard did. There were drops of blood on the balcony, as well as strange foot prints. The big toe of the foot was visibly separated from the others, like… like a Sheikah’s tabi. 

“And they threw themselves… ouch.” Aldhard moved to hop the railing himself, figuring that their interloper couldn’t have been far.

“Maybe we’ll be lucky,” Orrin commented. “And they’ll have hurt an ankle.” He had no intentions of jumping down, and returned inside to use the stairs.

Aldhard took off ahead of him to examine the trees Aditi was staking out with fluffed fur and plaintive, complaining yowls.

A trail of footprints through the lake’s damp grass and some crushed plants led him to peering up a willow tree in search of their intruder. Aditi did not seem interested, but Aldhard began to climb it himself. He could hear Orrin approaching from the house by then.

“Any luck?”

“Looking.” He drew himself up to a nice pair of branches and looked around. “… something.” It looked like hair. He picked it up - maybe six inches, wiry and pale. Certainly not his or Orrin’s. He looked around the tree for anything else.

More blood and a good vantage of what was beyond the fence, including a section of torn earth where he anticipated their intruder had thrown themselves in their flight from the premises. 

Not much was to be found. He climbed down, careful not to slip, and dropped from the tree near Orrin. The blond hair was held up for examination.

“…” Orrin took it with a thoughtful frown. “Are you going?”

“Yeah.” Aldhard headed for the fence. “Er, could you-”

“I’ll get Aditi’s leash.”

_She has a leash! How promising!_

It was going to be an interesting afternoon. Aldhard hoped they wouldn’t end up in front of Duke Hell explaining away Orrin’s newest acquisition.

He vaulted the fence, traipsing across the neighboring property after fresh tracks and wondering where Orrin got the odder creatures in his menagerie. Sure, he bred them, but where he did he get the _originals? _It seemed like a valid question to ask as the captain of the knights, but if Orrin was the previous captain, did that make asking invalid? Had Orrin filed paperwork? Did Aldhard _need to?_

There was a long trail over the Rosenthal property leading up to the overgrown rose bushes. Aldhard slowed as he approached them and made note to come out with some shears and handle what he could of the place - there was a Rosenthal left in Weiss, but not one who’d lived in this home. At any rate with the health and duties the one left had, it seemed the house could not be cared for, or perhaps had been forgotten.

One of the windows had been broken on the back of the house. Aldhard peered up at it with a frown pulling his mouth. It was on the second story, over a small roof that had trellises set against it and tacked into the cement by iron rods. One would have to risk many thorns to scale it, but if you were already running from a blade it seemed reasonable. He settled out of sight of the window nearby to wait on Orrin.

When Orrin appeared - not only with the lynx on a leash, but also with his maid, and a few knights dragged from their homes on their days off - Aldhard gestured up at the open window and then waved. The knights and maid fanned around the building to cover likely exits.

He patted himself down and found a fabric mask and a smoke-bomb. He covered his face and headed up the trellis.

#

The house had been a passable idea to get away from the lynx. The minstrel was honestly shocked it hadn’t followed him over the fence, but perhaps whatever loon kept a _wild animal _in the city also had the forethought to train it. It shocked him, but so had a lot of things since he’d come to this horrible place!

He headed into the estate with the rose bushes to hide out from the cat and anyone coming to see what the racket the cat was making was about. It was abandoned and overgrown - no one should notice him using it to lick his wounds. 

His myriad of mostly-cat-inflicted scratches, really. His arms and shins were also bleeding from rose thorns, and there were petals stuck to his person. It was… rather annoying. He took one off and bit into it, leaning against a dusty piece of furniture.

What to do…

He licked his lips and looked up at a faint noise from the room he’d come in by. The smell of something noxious drifted down the corridor. He arched his brows and moved backwards, tucking himself into a shadowed alcove. The room he was sheltering in was an interior one and so windowless.

He listened to the soft thump of someone climbing in the window, as he had, and then the creak of the floorboards. Even sticking close to the wall couldn’t protect from noise in an old building. 

The minstrel drew a dagger and held it at his side, loose and ready, as his company checked the rooms before his. Thump… thump… thump…

The door creaked open. There was a soft shuffle and squelch - muddy boots on old wood. 

He waited.

“Come out with your hands up.”

Oh. Just Sir Aldhard. Not ideal, but - the minstrel let himself relax a little. He put his hands over his head, one still clutching a dagger, and stepped out of the dark. 

Aldhard startled at the sight of him. “You!”

The minstrel wasn’t sure what to say here. He settled for a nod and a curt, “Hi.”

Aldhard didn’t put down his sword, but then the minstrel was still clutching a dagger even if it _was _suspended overhead. They both had to have known that he could bring his hand down and throw it point blank, anyway.

“Breaking and entering will get you time in the city jail.” The knight captain said, brows furrowed. “Resisting arrest will add to that, as well as the possibility of corporeal punishment.”

“Am I being arrested?” The minstrel asked. The sword was not lowered, and the knight continued to frown at him.

“Unless you have a very good reason for being here, my friend… yes. I do have to arrest you. Anything else is dereliction of duty.”

He kept glancing up over the minstrel’s head, looking at - something. Maybe for a muscle twitch to indicate the minstrel was about to fling the blade he clutched.

“I was escaping pursuit.” The minstrel said, “By an unknown pursuer. Had I known you were in the area I would have instead run to you.”

“_Would _you have.” It didn’t seem that Aldhard believed him. 

Maybe, the minstrel thought, he’d have to try another angle. Possibly even an honest one. The knight seemed like he probably responded better to the truth than a lot of the nobles the minstrel had met. He might even take it _well_, for a given definition.

“I’m going to have to take you in.” Aldhard said. He looked rather stern, but beside that there was an unhappy look. 

_Whatever do you think will happen if I go?_

“Alright. You are the knight captain.” The minstrel murmured. “And an honest one at that.”

Aldhard twitched as if the minstrel had taken his blade and thrown it, but it was still inert, safely overhead and held in a steady hand. 

“Yes.” The knight said, “I am.”

“But someone here isn’t.” The minstrel tipped his head. “Can you blame me for not trusting you without proof?”

“Of course not.” The knight captain moved to further block the door, as if he could really block the minstrel if it came down to it. The minstrel was sure he’d try. It was charmingly reminiscent of a forest child trying to do the same to him, ages and ages ago.

“I really was avoiding pursuit.” The minstrel continued. “I was walking through this district - it has less guard patrols, I’ve noticed-” The knight captain nodded, and the minstrel cracked a smile, “When I picked up a tail. So I bolted as soon as I could. Onto your friend’s property - he scared them off before they could follow me, actually.”

Aldhard let out a strange snorting noise. “You’re lucky _he _didn’t catch you.”

“I, hmm, I gathered from your conversation.” The minstrel shrugged his shoulders a little - Aldhard’s eyes shot back to the dagger held aloft, but it really was just a shrug and not a prelude to murder. “Which I heard most, if not all, of. You two are really very boring.”

Aldhard grimaced. He had been discussing some sensitive things, the minstrel thought, and if he was as honest a man as he seemed to be… he’d accept it. But if he was skittish, or less honest, or felt backed into a corner, they might be destined for a fight. The minstrel kept himself loose and ready, with his attention on the knight’s blade but his gaze eye-level.

“You still haven’t told me,” He prodded, “About what I saw the other night. Who _is _he? Why is his word worth more than mine?”

“Because you’re an outsider and - you’re not Hylian.” The knight captain’s lip curled around the explanation like it tasted as foul as it sounded. “This is a place that smiles on neither.”

“And what’s he?”

“A Lewenhart.” What should have been a worthless name, and -

“You’re related.” The minstrel said, “Is that favoritism then?” Everything Aldhard had said the night before pointed to animosity, but maybe the daytime would yield a different answer.

Aldhard snorted and shook his head. “He’s a knave and we’ve no love lost. But the name has more weight here than in Castletown. The more refugees the town has, the more the people push back against change. Lewenharts are crusaders here.”

“Racist bastards.” The minstrel summarized with a shrug. “I suppose even if I had a title-”

“You’d be considered first on the color of your eyes and second on your lack of ties to Weiss.” Aldhard said, “You could be a born prince of Hyrule and they’d be hard-pressed to accept you. Half the town snubs my mother, and she lived here for forty years.”

The minstrel shrugged again, and struggled not to laugh about it. _What a thought, me a prince_. “It doesn’t really matter, I suppose, if some backwater Duke doesn’t want to believe me.” His lips twitched. “And what about you?”

“What about me. I need to _arrest_ you.” Aldhard stressed, nodding to the dagger he held. “Would you please drop that, friend? I don’t wish to fight.”

“Ah, I understand,” The minstrel said, not dropping the dagger, “Only haven’t you just told me you’re keeping a murderer on the guard?”

“I have not. I will have him investigated.” Aldhard’s eyes glinted with the same cold light as sword-metal. 

“And acquitted.” The minstrel wasn’t interested. “I’ll be killed in your jail.”

“… that is within the realm of possibilities,” Aldhard murmured. He kept his blade steady.

The minstrel blinked at him, twice, and widened his eyes. “And you’d send me there.”

Aldhard frowned at him. “You’re not exactly working with me. I don’t _want_ to send you there - I’m sure you have your reasons for being so secretive, but my duty first is to Bremen. I need to keep my city safe! You won’t even tell me who you work for-”

“Ruto.” It fell out of him before he could overthink it. He’d gotten into so much more trouble before this by overthinking.

The knight stopped talking. He stared at the minstrel, who stared back with an expression of bland calm fixed on his face. 

“I work for Princess Ruto of the Zora.” The minstrel told him. “I’m here with the blessing of Princess Zelda of Hyrule.” The second part of his statement was mostly true. Zelda had blessed that Ruto do what was necessary to care for the waterways, and the minstrel’s presence here fell within that realm of duty. “I’ve been sent to investigate what is wrong with the water of the swamp.”

The knight’s shoulders twitched. His frown seemed to harden.

“I’m here about the bodies, by now.” The minstrel added. “Any decent sort would be up in arms about that.”

“… I know.” The knight straightened up. “It’s- … hmm.” He moved his sword arm, to the minstrel’s dislike, but it was in the name of sheathing his sword. When Aldhard spoke next, it sounded very much like a complaint. “You’re a very stubborn creature.” He murmured. “You can put your hands down. I’m going to trust you.”

“You’re a brave one.” The minstrel needled, “I wouldn’t trust me as far as I could throw me.” He put down his arms slowly, and re-sheathed the dagger.

The knight gave him a wry smile. “I think I can trust you at least that far.” He walked over, hands kept conspicuously at his sides and well within the minstrel’s sight.

The minstrel appreciated it. “If it’s any consolation, I _do _want to trust you, Sir Knight.” He murmured, “It’s only that no one is really all that trustworthy, and I am supposed to be here _in secret.”_

“So I’ve gathered.” The knight paused, then added, “You should work on that. You aren’t a very good spy.”

The minstrel made a face at him, but he couldn’t much argue. “It’s been a rough few months.”

“I’m sure it…” Aldhard paused and looked up over the minstrel’s head again, frowning. “… I’m sure it has.” He reached out a hand. 

The minstrel flinched - Aldhard’s hand settled briefly on his hair and then came away holding… a flower?

He blinked at the knight captain, who blinked back with a sort of humored smile peeking through his best attempt at looking stern. “You could have been killed.” The captain said, taking away the blossom. “And why are you out here alone?”

“I’ve lived this long. Maybe the knight captain is crazy.” The minstrel sniped, curling his lip. Aldhard laughed at him. 

The minstrel tipped his head back, unwilling to let Aldhard have the last word even in spirit. “Alone is easiest. Less time, less mess, easier to get up and go.” And if something happened to him, it was only him that had to be silenced. It wasn’t a happy existence, but it ticked off sensible, fulfilling and convenient.

“Alone can be dangerous,” Aldhard held out his hand, offering it again to the minstrel - who stared at it as curiously as the first time. _Why _did this man insist on reaching out to him? His gaze flickered back to Aldhard’s face. 

The knight was watching him with a patient, humored smile. “Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer an ally?”

The minstrel glared at him a long moment. An old impulse flared up to stab the outstretched hand and run. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust the gesture - on the contrary he did, and he _wanted to_, and that was what unsettled him. Likeable people had the easiest time lying to you. There were so many unknowns. Running would be easier.

Unbidden, he remembered the conversation he’d overheard, trying to escape the Underlake Manor. 

_Different is dangerous, huh._

Perhaps he should try laying the facts on the table. What he hadn’t already, and he could start with the confirmation that he was what the knight captain had made allusions to, prior. “I’m a Sheikah.” He said, “I’m here to gather information. What kind of ally could you make of someone like me?”

The knight’s shoulders lost most of their tension, the minstrel noted with a frown. 

It couldn’t go unquestioned. “_What_.” He demanded, “What about _any_ of that made you feel better?”

“You’re a Sheikah.” The knight said, lips twitching. “I wasn’t sure. I thought- perhaps-”

The minstrel waited with irritated anticipation at whatever stupidity he knew was going to be spewed. 

“I worried a few times that maybe you were a Deserter.” The knight said with a smile.

“What.” The minstrel bristled. “I have never - I _would _never - _how dare you.”_

“I said it was a worry. A few times!” Aldhard retracted his outstretched palm to hold it up in defense of himself, as if he was in danger of being struck. It would not do any good against the minstrel’s _words. _

“You offered to ally with me thinking I was a deserter? Of all ridiculous, insulting, treasonous things you could have said, I think that may well have been the worst of the lot!” The minstrel jabbed a finger at him. “What sort of knight are you! Did you expect to trick me? Or were you hoping for a scapegoat?”

“Neither, neither!” Aldhard held up his hands. “Please, hear me out-”

“I have heard _plenty-_” The minstrel turned to stalk away.

“You’ve really mostly raged at me, sir minstrel, please-” A hand caught on the minstrel’s shoulder and spun him back around. Another clapped on his free shoulder. Aldhard stared down at him and - the minstrel was really not pleased with the difference of their heights, now that it was thrust in his face like this…

“Please,” Aldhard said, peering down at him. “Listen. You did not seem a bad sort. And if you had been a deserter, I had figured you would probably have better reasons than most. I - know of the Ghulam taken in the wake of the great purge.” His fingers tightened on the minstrel’s shoulder, possibly to ward against an attempt to shrug him off. But despite him bringing up modern slavery in polite conversation, the minstrel did not attempt to do so. “I had thought you might be one of them. I am glad to learn you are not.”

The minstrel tilted his head back, annoyed when his hair shifted to expose the other half of his face. Annoying him _further_, the knight’s eyes roamed his face and he seemed pleased to see it. 

The minstrel huffed. “What does a knight of Hyrule care about a few slaves?” He reached up, intending to remove the knight’s hands from his shoulders. He delicately plucked at the one - it simply curled to the side and caught his palm instead. Annoying. Maybe he’d just stay still for the moment, holding hands with a lunatic in a dusty old manor-house. 

“It’s wrong. It’s always been wrong.” The knight said. “Acting like one person can be better than another based on appearances.” His hands were warm. “_You _have just as much worth as me, or as anyone else. If you were a deserter, you would still have that worth. Whatever you are now, you are worth the same as anyone else.”

The minstrel’s chest seemed too small and then too empty. His voice came out cool. “… no. I’m not.” He wiggled his fingers, testing what he’d needed to get free when the knight just… let go of him.

Aldhard didn’t move back, and he didn’t stop staring at the minstrel with that searching look, but he let go.

“You are,” The knight said with a confidence the minstrel envied, one unshaken by reality. “And I’m sure you realize it, too.”

“You shouldn’t say things like that to strangers.” The minstrel curled his hands up. “… Sir Aldhard. What does ‘ally’ mean to you?”

“We’re hardly strangers - ah.” Aldhard blinked. “Well, someone who will do their best to help if you call on them.”

The minstrel peered up at him, waiting. 

“I’ve already extended you the offer.” Aldhard reminded him. “I would like to help. Not entirely for altruistic reasons.”

The minstrel nodded, relaxing a margin despite himself. He preferred discussing what people got out of helping him. Benefits were easier to quantify the worth of than ephemeral feelings like _charity_. He wasn’t sure what he could promise outside of himself, but he was sure he could convince the knight he _had _promised many things without much regard for that. “What?” 

“I would prefer you not injure my knights or civilians.” Aldhard said, raising his chin. “There’s quite enough violence, and I cannot help someone who condones adding to it.”

The minstrel made a show of making note. “What else? What do you _get _out of it?”

“I need help.” Aldhard said with a frankness that still managed to startle the minstrel, and perhaps always would. “I have few knights and our squires are not prepared to graduate. You know what you’re doing, choosing to play the clown aside. I need someone like you.”

It sounded desperate, and liable to be at least a partial manipulation. His interest was piqued despite himself. 

“There are so many guards here,” The minstrel drawled, “You mean to tell me that even with numbers that I’ve seen, you are short-staffed?”

The reaction that earned was gratifying. Aldhard’s eyes flared with the same sort of anger the minstrel had witnessed in secret, spying on him in another knight’s home. 

“The guards of Weiss and the knights of Weiss are not the same group, nor are they led by the same commander. Which you well know.” Aldhard said, “The guards have lower standards of entry. They will oft take men who were rejected as knights.” He let out a sigh. “Beyond that… bluntly? The upper echelons of the guards are loyal to the council and to the Old Duke, and not the sitting one. They are as a tool to intimidate the public, not _protect it._ Not anymore, if they ever did.”

Wow. The minstrel tried counting and there were… at least _three _insulting statements in there, not to mention at least two that pointed to treasonous thoughts. That was far more than he was expecting to be handed to work with.

He schooled his expression back from the awe he’d let slip to something approaching neutrality.

“Very well. Then, the guards are not the same as your knights, and you wish my assistance in your investigation.” He made sure to sound impersonal. No need for Sir Aldhard to remember that the minstrel, more or less, was seeking the same answers for a different mistress. “What’s that look? Is there still something else?”

The knight hesitated a moment. “I… cannot ask you to trust me without reservation,” He said, “But for this to work… we would need _some _trust between us.”

“_Ugh_.”

The knight put up both hands and said, “I know, I know.” 

Which did little to reassure the minstrel that he knew anything at all. 

“But for me to help you - I’ll need to know at least a little, about what you’re doing and what you mean to accomplish by it. And in return…” The knight looked rather skittish a moment - the minstrel honed in on it, curious. The knight glanced up at him, brows furrowing. “… I will tell you about myself. That is.” 

The minstrel arched his brows. Waited. 

“Potentially incriminating information, to pay for the same. Is that fair?” The knight was almost pleading and the minstrel _almost _felt guilty doing that to a grown man, but stopped at the edge for his own sake. Survival first, work second, humanity last.

_Fair _was an ugly word to someone who’d scarcely escaped slavery and survived two wars besides. 

Or… had to watch his city treat people so that some were more equal than others, when he was clearly not of a mind. It wasn’t as if he thought the knight had it bad off, but that did sound - torturous, in its own unique way. The sort of thing that might make you hate yourself sooner or later. 

Too good to be true, probably. He wanted to talk himself out of trusting the man talking to him. He settled for asking the knight to do it. Most people did, if he just gave them enough time to get going. “How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

The knight gave him a smile that seemed to signal more resignation than happiness. “I can’t offer you a way to know, any more than you could offer one to me.” His eyes were wide; imploring and earnest. The minstrel hated being looked at like that. “There’s going to be a necessary amount of faith to the agreement.”

Goddesses damn him. Eyes like _that_ would lead him over a cliff he couldn’t climb back up some day.

He looked away from the knight. “Consider it a probationary arrangement.” He muttered, “Words for words. Favors for favors. Fair?” _Such_ an ugly word, and the knight was smiling at him like he hadn’t said anything so banal.

“Fair,” Aldhard agreed in as warm a voice as the minstrel heard people speak to friends with. He needed to be careful or he might eventually slip and think it genuine. “Can I ask your name again, then? Minstrel seems a little distant.”

The minstrel sighed through his nose; he _preferred _distance. The point was that people couldn’t get across it, at least, not before he’d gotten an arrow trained on them. “… I don’t have a proper surname, but-” He didn’t want to talk about it. He rushed on, before every reason this was a horrible idea could play through his head again. “Sheik.” He held out a hand for Aldhard to take, “I’m called Sheik.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaand the other chapter I was waiting ages to post is UP! Finally! *cheers* 5 chapters after I meant it to be!  
Next chapter is a Link chapter.

**Author's Note:**

> Please don’t pick up someone who may have injured their head or neck! Instead, call for medical assistance from someone with EMT training. They can check and make sure there isn’t an injury that will be worsened with movement. Link doesn’t know that, and isn’t in a position where he could abide by it anyway - of a set of terrible options, he picked the least horrible.
> 
> This started out as a rewrite of Static Red, a fic I worked on over almost a 10 year period... but rapidly turned into something else. Some elements carried over, as did several characters. Please be aware if you read the first or second versions!
> 
> I don't know how often updates will be, sorry. I have a good chunk of this written, it's just finding time to edit and proofread it. But I've been sitting on this for a year or so now and I'd like to start posting it, so... here we go.


End file.
